Tales of Fa'Diel
by Niana Kuonji
Summary: Come, gentle reader, and enter a story that begins, not with 'Once Upon a Time', but with 'In a place that was empty of anything but the name Fa'Diel...'
1. Chapter 1

I told you that I had LOM plot bunnies nibbling on my toes. So, here we go! Maybe I'll be the first person in this sector to actually finish the whole set of adventures, in full write out or in passing? n,.,n Who knows?

Disclaimer: I own nothing of Mana but the game and CD. Please don't sue me, I refuse to give up my manga collection.

There will be some discrepancies between fic and actual script, mostly because no one has bothered to write down more than a few parts of the game, and I have no system upon which to play. Hurray for Artist's Perogative?

This fic will have some mild swearing and some sure signs of a pairing, as well as RPG violence.

—————————

In a place that was empty of anything but the name of Fa'Diel, there came to be a tall tree on the top of a small hill. And against that trunk was built a cottage, crowned in golden thatch with the windows of a second-story room peeking from the sides of the sharply-slanted roof. The branches of the tree shaded the small home in the summer, and even though the branches were bare in winter, they still protected the cottage from the worst of the snow.

Directly behind the guardian tree was a second, even smaller hill, crowned by chimneys shaped like a large bottle and like a pot, linked to the instruments workshop and the forge hidden beneath that hill, respectively.

When one was standing on the path leading up to the front door and was facing the cottage, if one followed a circular path to the right they would find a small meadow cradling a single-story barn built along the same lines as the cottage, but left plain wood instead of neatly whitewashed. Continuing along the path brought a person past the workshops and right around to the front of the cottage again.

A third path branching off of the circle path to the left of the front door led into a strange orchard with a single gnarled tree standing sentinel, roots arching through the air to form bowers from which unusual fruits and vegetables hung, ripe for plucking. The orchard's tree wore a set of knots and a stub of a branch in the shape of a grandfather's gentle smile.

And in the cottage itself, in the single large room that made up the second story, a young woman slept in a bed tucked into an alcove in the wall, dreaming of a tree far more massive than either her own familiar guardian or her orchard tree, one that spoke in a woman's voice and begged to be remembered and needed again.

The dream-tree vanished in a blaze of light followed close by darkness and the dreamer awoke, slitting green eyes against the sunlight pouring across her polished wooden floor. "That's it," she mumbled drowsily to the small cactus sitting in a pot by the fireplace, "no more fruit smoothies right before bed, I don't care _how_ hot it is during summer."

"Smoothies," agreed Lil' Cactus, blinking and smiling at his human and nodding his blossom-crowned head. The young woman chuckled, tossing back hair the same dusty gold as the thatch on her roof, and climbed out of bed to ready herself for a new day.

A shower was first on the list followed by clean clothes; the young woman, whose name was Rei, contemplated the contents of her closet and wondered for the hundredth time if she should get something besides the fighting clothes that seemed to be all she had.

It wasn't like her clothes weren't practical—the outfit as a whole was much like a leotard made from soft purple fabric, with maroon crisscrossing her chest to form the neck-strap, since there weren't any sleeves or shoulder fabric. It had something of a skirt in the form of four elongated points that hung to her knees. The outfit left everything free—even if it didn't leave much to the imagination.

_To the imagination of who?_ Rei wondered, puzzled at the way that last thought jolted her. Then she nodded, remembering. _To my friends, of course. That dream is really messing with my head this morning._

But what friends? Either the dream was blocking such memories, or something else was going on; because for some reason Rei couldn't remember anything of the world beyond her home. Growing concerned, Rei found herself studying her hands, the slender fingers callused from instruments and ridged scars striping her from the tips of her fingers to just past her wrists.

She played music for elementals and bore the marks of fighting; she had to know people just to purchase materials for those tools she needed. She had to know people to sell the things she made in her forge.

And of _course_ she did, Rei remembered in relief. She knew everyone in the town less than half a day's travel down the road from her home! She would never, ever drink smoothies just before bed ever again. Not if it messed with her head like this.

Feeling her mood brighten now that things were behaving themselves in her mind, Rei slipped on a pair of arm-coverings that protected everything from knuckle to elbow from the worst of injuries in fights, adding a matched set of gold geometric cuffs to her upper arms.

Her fingers rested on the metal for an extra moment, Rei smiling fondly at them. She loved magic, especially in her forge. These bands would expand into her armor at the slightest hint of danger. Her only other clothing were durable shoes with fur-wraps to protect her lower legs, a fringed cloth hanging from the back of each wrap, and a belt to hold her knives.

But what Rei loved best out of anything she owned were her hair ornaments. They almost resembled pipes, thin tubes of silver capped in pink-and-green enameling in triangular, geometric patterns. Three pipes went behind each ear, ranging from the length of her palm to half-again the length of her hand, resembling nothing so much as the crest of some exotic bird when they were in place. Four short, fat pipes held in the ends of her hair, two for what usually swung behind her and one each for the thick strands that tended to hang in front of her shoulders.

Grooming complete, Rei blew a kiss at her pet spine-ball and trotted down the stairs, calling behind her, "Be good and watch the house for me, okay, Lil' Cactus?"

It squeaked at her happily as she disappeared into the main room below. Without sparing a glance for her library door—she really did need to organize in there one of these days—Rei wove her way around the large table that served as a work surface and an eating surface in one to the window next to her tiny kitchen.

Tucked under that window was a mid-sized green chest that wasn't holding anything besides her stash of ready Lucre for rainy days or empty cupboards, which she promptly cleaned out and stuffed into the pouch on her belt next to her knives. After grabbing a bunch of bellgrapes from a bowl in the kitchen, Rei headed outside for town.

Only to stop in her tracks on the front step, startled by the child-like being ambling up and down her front walk. It was obviously plant-based, broad leaves making up its' body and the rather tall, hat-like growth on top of its' head. The sweet face lit up at the sight of the fighter blinking at it in bemusement, and it wandered over with a bright smile.

"I'm a Sproutling!" it declared proudly in a voice that was as childish as its face; young, high, and clear. Rei blinked again. It was utterly bizarre, at least as intelligent as her own Lil' Cactus, and yet familiar in the have-I-met-you-before? kind of familiarity. It just seemed right to have this…Sproutling meandering up and down her front walk. "The world is shaped by our imagination! Did you know that?"

When Rei shook her head, it produced a handful of colored blocks and pressed them into her free hand, at the same time lecturing her on how to use one's imagination to find places in a way that would be funny if it hadn't struck a chord of déjà vu in the fighter.

"What are these?" Rei asked when it looked to her like the Sproutling had wound down.

"That's the town of Domina!" the Sproutling beamed.

Rei lifted an eyebrow but said nothing else while her Sproutling resumed its amble up and down, choosing instead to examine her gift. _A child's idea of Domina, maybe,_ Rei thought to herself dubiously, and then she smiled a bit, feeling a connection between the colorful blocks and the comfortable atmosphere that filled the town from sign to church.

Then the smile vanished on the heels of dismayed surprise. _What in the name of the Mana Goddess did I _put _in that smoothie?_

Chiding herself on mixing new fruits from the market with the cinnamon-vanilla ice-cream to be had at her favorite pub, Rei shook her head, pocketed the blocks, and whistled for her pet Rabite, Nip. When the caramel ball of fluff was bouncing at her heels, she trotted down the walk and vaulted her low front gate in a practiced motion, Nip clearing the obstacle as easily as she, the pair heading for the town of Domina.

———

Rei sighed happily as she and Nip cleared the last, low ridge and the town of Domina spread out before them. The sleepy town had always reminded her of a contented tortoiseshell housecat, puddled in the middle of a depression in a green patchwork blanket, for some reason—maybe it was the air of serene languor that hung in the air like the purr of the cat she imagined Domina to be.

But there wasn't the usual quiet in the main part of town today. No sooner had Rei crossed the footbridge over the stream that ran through the whole town, bypassing the sign that proudly declared she was entering Domina, than she ran smack into the middle of a heated argument.

Rei stopped, taken aback to see her usually so calm friend Duelle shouting at a stranger that had 'exotic' pasted all over him. She'd never seen that particular shade of green in a person's hair before—not naturally, anyway, and Mark's wife Jennifer refused to talk about that particular incident—nor had she ever seen the kind of armor the man was wearing.

It wasn't that he was wearing much of it; his armor appeared to consist mostly of a turquoise, purple-gem-studded glove that covered his right arm from fingertip to his shoulder. But if she were to judge by the color, glitter, and the seamless way that a thick spike of stone emerged to protect the right side of his head, she would bet that the whole thing was some kind of magically-forged crystal.

Normally, that kind of thing would have Rei itching to pounce him and start asking questions—mostly along the lines of who created it and could she talk to the armorer who had created such a magnificent piece of functional art—but something else caught her attention and roused her not-inconsiderable curiosity.

It was a gem. About the size of her palm and the same bright blue as the stranger's wary eyes. Round, smooth as a river-stone. And obviously very firmly attached to the bare skin just below the stranger's collarbone.

Something about that stone nagged at her…

"At least tell me your name!" Duelle demanded in a near-shout when the stranger turned and began to walk—walk? No, make that a _stalk_—towards Rei's favorite pub.

Rei leaned against the white picket fence that enclosed the yard belonging to Mark, his family, and his weapons shop, watching as the stranger turned, a flash of uncertainty briefly replacing the wary aloofness the young man wore as easily as his grass-green cloak. She watched as he visibly struggled with the decision of revealing his name, and watched his head go proudly up as he said only, "Elazul," and disappeared into the pub.

The diminutive, onion-helmeted warrior shook his head and glared at the closed door. "Geez," Duelle complained. "He makes me sick."

"He certainly does seem to have pushed a few of your buttons," Rei agreed, making her friend jump a little in surprise.

"Rei! Stop sneaking up on people! It's rude to give your friends heart attacks!"

"When I give you one, I'll make sure to apologize," Rei parried and riposted, easy with the familiar complaint. Duelle and the others she knew in Domina (everyone) were always complaining that she was shadow-silent, nevermind that she kept telling people that the shadows _she_ fought sometimes weren't really quiet at all. They loudly squished.

Duelle snorted, as familiar as she with the game, and shrugged narrow shoulders. "Anyway, my friend Teapo's in the shopkeeper's house. Come talk to us if you get a chance, all right? You're hardly ever in town lately."

Rei nodded, watching him disappear into Mark's house. It didn't even seem strange to her that he hadn't bothered to knock; everyone knew everyone else in Domina, one didn't knock unless one was from somewhere else or on poor terms with the owner of the door one knocked on.

After Duelle went inside, Rei twitched her fingers and clucked at Nip, letting him know that he should stop trying to catch the light shards dancing across the surface of the little stream and follow her. Nip happily complied, shaking water off his nose and bouncing after his human with enthusiasm.

Rei glanced down at her pet, smiling faintly as she recalled that his favorite activity was floofing himself on her feet when she was in the rocking chair by her downstairs fireplace and that they hadn't done that for a while. She needed to give her pets (she also had a Rattler Boa she'd named Tsuta currently grazing in the small pasture next to the barn) a lot more attention than she had been. Nip was positively starved for affection.

Putting that aside, Rei reached for the knob to the pub door only to back away quickly as the bulk of her least-favorite person popped it open and filled the doorway. "Out of the way, please," said Niccolo the rabbit merchant with as much pompous attitude as ever, "it's important to share."

Rei was forced to move or be flatted by the rabbit who was taller than she was by at least a head—and as round as she was tall. Nip pressed himself against her shin, growling to show that he was Not Pleased with the way Niccolo was treating his person.

Niccolo ignored him, instead striding past and up the road towards the market. His retreat gave Rei an excellent view of the rabbit merchant's tail, something that had always seemed odd to the fighter. Niccolo's tail was banded in white and brown, long, and curled as tight as the noisemakers children got at birthday parties. Rei had occasionally joked that the merchant's tail was the outward sign of his true nature—which, despite his generally sunny smile and cheerful demeanor, was about as honest as snake-oil.

_Peddler of smiles, indeed,_ Rei thought sourly to herself. _The only smiles he looks to create are his own. _She looked down at Nip and lifted an eyebrow. "How about it, furball?" she asked quivering ears. "Should we go and tell Niccolo exactly what we think about greedy, hypocritical bunnies?"

Nip chittered, hopping in place a few times and making a dangerous smile tug at his human's mouth.

"All right then." Going into her own hunter's stalk, Rei led the way up the road to the northern part of town and the market, hands resting easily on the hilts of the knives strapped to her belt. On the way she bumped into two different Sproutlings: one by Miss Yuka's inn that said it liked counting stars, and one at the beginning of the market that said something that made Rei pause for thought.

"Everyone with a soul always disappears," the little being said in the high, clear voice that Rei was coming to recognize as a standard characteristic of Sproutlings. "We don't have souls, so we always stay. The poet Pokiehl says so."

Rei had never heard of a Sproutling dying…then she shook her head, pipes chiming against each other. Of _course_ she'd never heard of the things dying! She'd only found out about them today!

Which was strange, because everyone else was treating the Sproutlings as if they were as common as houseplants, and she _knew_ she didn't remember seeing those Sproutlings here in town before. Strange and stranger…

Telling herself firmly that what she needed was a good fight to clear her head and to always check the expiration date of whatever she ate or drank before bed, Rei nodded to the philosophical Sproutling and proceeded into the marketplace.

Niccolo paced back and forth in the space between the tent-roofed stall that Jennifer frequented and the fruit-themed fortune teller MeiMei, ears twitching as he complained loudly about bandits on Luon Highway and how was he supposed to make an honest living when poor merchants like himself were the favorite targets of such low-brow thieves?

"You wouldn't know the first thing about making an 'honest living', Niccolo," Rei snorted as she strolled up, flicking dusty-blonde hair over her shoulder with another faint chime.

Niccolo turned to her mournfully. "You don't think the highway is too dangerous?"

Too set on giving the rabbit a piece of her mind—no charge—Rei walked right into the trap he'd laid. "No," she shot at him. "Why would I be afraid of a rag-tag bunch of sharpsters?"

The merchant's large, floppy ears managed to nearly stand up straight as he beamed at her. "Wonderful! Then you can be my bodyguard! We'll go wipe out those bandits and make the highway safe for people who want to make an honest living and I'll make you rich!"

"Hey!" Rei yelped at the furry hand-paw clamping onto her wrist with unexpected strength. "Wait a—wait! Hang on! Stop pulling me you stupid rabbit!"

"We can go right after I pay a visit to Teapo," Niccolo declared, once again his cheerfully pompous self. "I've got something I think she'll like."

Rei groaned in irritation. Teapo the Dove was nice enough, but to say she was thicker than two planks together was a kindness. She was always getting swindled by traveling peddlers and the like claiming to have rare items that they charged ridiculous amounts of money for. Sometimes Rei wondered what was in the water the teapot-like, magical creature carried around, because no other Dove that she had met was ever as dense as Teapo.

And Niccolo was taking advantage of that fact. Rei vowed silently to leave the crooked dealer in the middle of the highway the first chance she got. The jerk.

About the time Rei was swearing vengeance on Niccolo the two (plus one irritated Rabite) made it to Mark's house and went in. Duelle was still there, talking with Teapo as she tended to the hearth and a couple of other small chores. The onion-warrior took one look at Niccolo and scowled, but brightened a bit when Rei mimed stabbing him in the rump with one of her knives.

She really wanted to do it, too. But manners drummed into her long ago forbade it. So she simply shared a grimace with her scimitar-wielding friend as he edged past her out of the house. She wished she could leave, too.

"Oi, 's Niccolo!" Teapo greeted upon spotting them. Rei leaned against the counter and crossed her arms, hoping that for once, the Dove wouldn't be so gullible. "What 'ave you got for me today?"

Rei decided she didn't like being always right in her guesses about Niccolo as he pulled out an old, worn wagon wheel from the peddler's sack he carried. "Ta-da! I found this during my travels, and since you're such a loyal customer I thought I'd give you a discount."

Hope unfurled a few petals in Rei at the doubtful look Teapo cast at the thing and the equally-dubious comment of, "I dunno, Niccolo. It looks like an' ol' regular wheel t' me."

Niccolo let his ears droop in hurt disappointment, mournfully said, "You're right. It's just an old wheel. I'm going," and turned to leave. Rei let herself hope for a second that Teapo wasn't going to fall for the same old trick again, but that hope quickly died when the Dove leaped forward.

"'Old on, Niccolo! Even I can tell that aren't no regular wheel! How much?"

Ears lifted happily, the rabbit answered, "50,000 Lucre."

The knife-fighter winced and muttered "Robbery."

Teapo winced, too. "Niccolo, yore a wee bit too proud of yoreself. Nothin' costs that much. 'S truth!"

"Bring me 50,000 Lucre," Niccolo restated firmly, then his eyes fell on Rei leaning on the counter nearby and gleamed. "Until then…I'll let Rei here use it."

"And just what, pray tell, am I going to do with a wheel that has no wagon attached to it?" Rei inquired acidly as the wheel was dumped in her hands. "I've no use for it, not when it looks like a small breeze will snap it to kindling."

Teapo apparently didn't hear her, too busy assuring Niccolo that she'd get him the money as long as he saved her that wheel. Rei sighed, counted backwards from twenty, and waited until Niccolo had left the house ahead of her before telling Teapo that she'd bring it back tomorrow after breakfast.

"But wot about Niccolo?" the Dove asked her, anxiety easing.

"Hang that rabbit. He wants to argue about it, tell him I said it was a gift for being 'such a loyal customer'."

Nip snickered by her feet, there was no other word to describe the sound he made. Rei patted the Dove on the porcelain-like shoulder and strode out, wondering if Niccolo would just go and get himself skinned if she let him charge off by himself. Gah.

She got five feet past the signpost where Niccolo was waiting for her when there was a bouncing sound and the weight of the wheel she'd slung on her back was abruptly gone. Rei yelped, pulled a knife and whirled, staring behind her at…nothing. Her back tingled from a strange kind of magic that she'd never felt before, but that magic hadn't felt like thief-magic to her. No, it had felt like…_release_.

"What's the matter?" Niccolo asked, waddling up. Rei shifted her weight from foot to foot, flexing the hand that had held the wheel until about two seconds ago. She couldn't help but notice that the mid-morning haze that had obscured the entrance to the highway had burned off about the same time that the wheel had vanished.

"That wheel just disappeared," she told him uneasily. "I had it in my hand, and then 'poof'. No more wheel. And look." She gestured with her knife at the dirt of the road at her feet. It had only four sets of footprints: hers, Niccolo's, the round shapes of Nip's bounces, and the one-way footprints that Rei would bet belonged to Elazul. "No sign of a pickpocket and I _know _the feel of thief-magic. There wasn't any." Her hand brushed her pouch as she put her knife away, and she yanked it open in disbelief. "Hey! Those toy blocks my Sproutling gave me disappeared, too! What gives?"

Niccolo crossed his arms over his chest—no mean feat—and did his best to glare at Rei. "If you lost my wheel, then you owe me 50,000 Lucre," he told her sternly, then squeaked when a knife glittered just under his nose.

"You were saying, rabbit?" Rei asked him calmly, spinning her other knife over the knuckles of her right hand.

Niccolo twitched, gulped, and stammered, "I-I said that we-we should get going."

"Smart bunny." Rei sheathed both her blades in an easy motion, rubbing the hilts a moment with a smile. While jewelry-quality gold was soft, the Vizel gold used in weapons like hers was hard enough to cut through stone and wood easily—_Especially, _Rei thinks to herself happily, _when you temper them with magical items like Elemental Coins._ "So what are you waiting for, Niccolo? Nip and I aren't carrying you."

Niccolo gazed resentfully at the back of his 'hired bodyguard' and contemplated leaving her in the middle of the highway the first chance he got. And that sorry excuse for a powderpuff that she called a Rabite, too.

———

Rei was very close to just leaving Niccolo on the highway and finding herself a stream to dunk one very overheated body in, so long as it was cooler than boiling. She had discovered a very important fact that she'd forgotten since her last trip along the highway: there was, literally, no shade on the road. Nada. Zip. Zilch.

And the temperature was somewhere close to the hundreds. Rei was nearing a meltdown as she plunked down against a scraggly tree ten feet from the road, compacting herself as best she could in the meager shade. Nip and Niccolo seemed to be just fine and Rei found herself envying the thick fur they wore that seemed to block most of the heat.

"Those bandits are insane," Rei panted to Niccolo, vainly trying to wipe away the sweat running into her eyes. "It's frigging hot, and they're _still_ robbing and poaching?"

"Greed is a powerful motivator," Niccolo replied absently, using one of his long ears to shade his eyes as he looked down the road. "How much farther, do you think?"

Using a hand to fan herself, Rei squinted the way Niccolo was looking and ignored the irony of Niccolo's statement. "Well," she told him, "we're almost to the fork. Since nobody short of another Wisdom will mess with Gaeus down the southern fork, I'm betting we'll find those bandits down the north fork. That's another couple of miles, at least, and I'll bet at least a half-dozen more monster ambushes. Don't they know when to give up?"

"Probably not. Are you ready to continue?"

Rei levered herself back up with a groan, dusting off her clothes and nodding in reluctance. She really needed to cool off, soon, or she was going to get sick. However, if she went home now then the bandits would probably attack someone else before she got back here. Her honor wouldn't stand for it.

So instead she thought cool thoughts, resettled her knives, and followed after Niccolo at a fraction of her usual pace. It was only about five minutes until they reached the fork and through the heat-shimmer Rei spotted someone she hadn't met before pacing by the southern path.

It was a cat-woman, a year or two younger than Rei, all over soft gray-brown fur with a dusty-cream muzzle. Dark gold-brown hair cropped short, her large ears were hung with bell earrings to match the one around her neck. She wore fingerless gloves laced up the back and shorts that hugged her legs to just below the knee, laced up the front of her thighs with the same color and kind of cord as her glove laces. Her top was strapless and cropped short across her ribs.

Rei wasn't surprised. Most of the furred folk that she'd met, while bowing to modesty, tended to wear loose clothing or things that could easily be laced and therefore wouldn't rub fur wrong. Niccolo was a perfect example with his green, poncho-like shirt.

The cat-girl's outfit was a uniform shade of lavender-purple trimmed or reinforced by fabric the same shade as her hair—even the fabric of her open-toed sandals was purple and gold, support wraps at bicep and tail-tip the same dusty, gold-brown color. And she wore a pair of nunchaku strapped at her hips in the same places as Rei's.

Rei liked her immediately. She ignored the vestigial wings on the cat-girl's back—it was rude to point out things that can't be used amongst the non-humans—approaching with a small, easy smile. "Hey, hot day, isn't it?"

The cat-girl startled, whipping around to show wide green eyes. "Oh! Hello. My name's Daena and I'm from Gato Grottoes."

Niccolo suddenly realized that Rei wasn't behind him and turned to find his 'bodyguard' chatting to someone he'd never seen before. He hurried over, stars in his eyes. "WOW! What cute ears!" he exclaimed dreamily. "We belong together!"

Daena gave him an icy, sideways glare, lifting her head high. "Excuse me," she huffed, "I wasn't talking to you."

Rei had never seen Niccolo wilt for real so quickly. She found herself liking Daena even more. Anyone who could put the rabbit in his place so thoroughly was someone worth befriending.

"Well said, Daena. May I ask why you're on Luon?"

Daena's ears slid sideways, making the bells dangling from them chime. "I came to see the Wisdom," she confessed, "but now that I'm here I'm too scared to see him. How about you?"

"Pest control," replied the knife-fighter, jerking her thumb towards the northern fork. "Tell you what; meet me in Domina in a couple of days and I'll go with you to see Gaeus. He's really a big softie, even when he's telling hard truth, you know. Okay?"

Daena nodded, looking happier as Rei caught hold of one of Niccolo's long ears and dragged him up the north fork while telling him to reel in the hormones. She kept dragging him despite his larger size between the predicted monster ambushes all the way to the end of the road. Nip kept faithfully to her heels, taking pleasure in showing his wild, white-furred cousins who was boss.

At the end of the road waited a couple of Chobin Hoods, rat-like two-leggers whose most dangerous characteristic was their aim with the bows they always carried. One of the Chobins swaggered forward, clawed hand held out in demand.

"Give us da cash! Cash cash-cashcashcash!"

Niccolo glared. "These guys are crazy for money. I can't stand them."

Rei sighed, digging into her belt pouch. "I'd wait until I had the moral high ground to throw stones, rabbit. Besides, they're bandits, remember? 'Course they're money-hungry." She came up with what she wanted and flicked a single Lucre coin into the dust at the Chobin's feet. "Here."

"Not enuff, not enuff!" snarled the second Chobin, waving his bow.

"Well, that's all I'm paying as my toll. You really should just set up a booth or something," suggested Rei, easing into a position that she could lunge from. "It'd make you look much more respectable."

That set the two (proudly tattered) ruffians off and they started squeaking angrily, jumping around and waving their bows. "Oh yeah? Oh yeah?" the first one howled, Rei's Lucre clenched in his fist. "Master, come get rid of these punks!!"

_Master? These pipsqueaks have a ma—oh, damn. _Rei stared up at the very large Mantis Ant that had blown its minions away in a thunderous landing and fought the sensation of her skin crawling. _That's a freaking huge bug._

She nearly swatted Niccolo when he plunged an over-sized paw/hand into his bag and produced a brightly-colored treasure box, setting it at the feet of the giant bug. Then she recognized the tingle of magic against her skin and quickly took several large strides backwards while Niccolo said, "My apologies, sir. Please take this gift as a token of my remorse."

Then _he_ skipped back and grinned as the box exploded in the monster's face. Didn't faze it too much, but it gave Rei a chance to leap in with knives glittering in sweeping arcs. Those knives found the chinks in the Mantis' armor and stabbed at soft flesh, while Niccolo jumped in himself and ripped whole chunks of the monster's shell away. Nip kept the monster distracted by doing what he did best: biting whatever limb was within his reach. Mostly ankles and feet.

Before too long—although it felt like an eternity to the overheating Rei—the Mantis shrieked, exploded, and vanished in a clatter of shell. Rei dropped to the ground, collecting a few large crystals that had dropped when the Mantis died, as well as a handful of large-denomination Lucre coins. Niccolo swept up the rest before turning happily to her.

"Well, as I promised," he chirped, "here's your payment for helping me. An Iron Pot, a greenball bun, a tako bug, and these." Rei blinked at the cheerfully-burning lamp and an old, tarnished medallion slung on what was obviously a silver chain as tarnished as the fierce face hanging from it. "All for the low price of 300 Lucre!"

Her hands were too full of items to stop Niccolo from plunging a paw-hand into her pouch and withdrawing three of the large coins she'd picked up, but her foot only missed his gut by a sucked-in breath as he stepped back.

"Plundering, twisted rabbit! Snake-oil seller! Scheming, robbing, honorless mound of blubber!" Rei swore as she stuffed everything but the lamp and medallion into her haversack, which she set on the ground or hung 'round her neck, respectively. "Come back here so I can turn you into a rug!"

"Smile!" chided Niccolo, hastily pocketing her hard-earned money and backing away. "I'm a merchant and half of what I do is make people happy, so smile and let the world know you're happy."

"I'll show you 'happy' you swindler! You promised to pay me, not make _me_ pay for a bunch of worthless junk!" Rei picked up the lamp and prepared to throw it.

Niccolo got out one last, "Smile!" and bolted. Rei ran a few steps after him, but stopped, panting, the chain of the lamp wound in her fingers. It was unusual enough that she supposed it might be worth something, if only providing something to study on winter nights. Suspended from the chain was a stone crescent, one slender strand for each end of the crescent and its middle. The fire burned in the empty air embraced by the stone. It was a wonder it wasn't burning her fingers off.

"You owe me a cold drink that isn't free, rabbit!" she yelled at the retreating dustcloud. "Next time we meet I get it, or I'm taking your tail in exchange! Stupid rabbit," she muttered to an outraged Nip, who was deeply offended that his teeth hadn't quite connected with the evil merchant's calf. "Let's go home and take a break. I'm too tired to go shopping now."

———

Rei collapsed across her bed that evening, feeling better now that she'd had a cool bath and a concoction of fruits and a few kinds of salts to replace the electrolytes she'd burned off today. She quietly swore to herself when she remembered that she'd promised to bring the vanished wheel to Teapo tomorrow after breakfast. Groaning, she pulled her sore legs up and sighed, figuring that she'd just have to tell the Dove what had happened and apologize.

"Hey, Lil' Cactus," she called to her pet houseplant across the room, "you wouldn't believe the day I had…"

———

So, what do you think? Good, bad? There's a review option at the bottom of the screen for a reason, you know. n,.,n


	2. The Little Sorcerers

Hello, I'm back! To my two wonderful reviewers, thank you! Ovo, I think I sent you a reply, but if I didn't then here it is. I agree with you that the map set-up is odd, but it makes a fun mini-game once you get nine laid out. Thank you for the encouragement!

RaspberryIce4656: I'm hoping just as much as you that I don't fizzle out halfway or less. It frustrates me when an author abandons a perfectly good story—more when it's my own. I love Elazul, the chivalrous idiot. I'm a firm believer in the HeroinexElazul pairing. n,.,n! Embarrassing, but true. (I had fun writing the part about the smoothies!) Keep reviewing!

——————

The next morning broke clear and cool, a sleepy Rei yawning as she worked a couple of kinks from her shoulder as she walked to the front door. She'd see if she'd gotten any mail yet, then head into town to talk to Teapo. She'd get breakfast from the pub while she was at it. And Nip and Tsuta would stay here today; Trent had given her a good crop from the seeds she'd given him a few days ago so their feedboxes were full. Nip was still worn out from yesterday and if a repeat or something similar to yesterday were to happen again the heat wouldn't do Tsuta any good. Rattler Boas were just really big snakes, and they depended on the environment to regulate their body temperatures just like their smaller, harmless cousins. Noon in summer without shade could kill him.

Looking around her main room, Rei frowned to herself and thought that the place seemed empty without someone besides her in the house. She'd been too busy to notice it yesterday, but things had been a lot livelier when her older brother had lived here with her. Now that he was off traveling the world, she felt a little lonely.

She shook her head in self-reproach. Fretting about it wouldn't change anything. _Less fretting, more fixing_ was what Xan would tell her.

Stretching luxuriously, Rei opened the door and paused on the front steps, mildly surprised to see the mail-carrier Amelia Pelican on her front walk, waving her wings and looking thoroughly distressed with her blue-purple feathers sticking up in all directions. "An army-harmy of pumpkins have taken over west Domina," she wailed, handing Rei a packet of letters and a small box. "This is so hairy-scary!"

"I'll take care of it," Rei promised absently, once again wishing that she wouldn't be right about trouble showing up, let alone having it show up on her doorstep. Pelican wailed a little more, but headed back for Domina at top speed to spread the word.

Rei leaned against the wall next to her door, sorting through her mail to see if she needed to send a reply after she'd taken care of the pumpkins. One dusty-gold eyebrow lifted as what Pelican had said finally sank it.

"Pumpkins?" she wondered aloud. "How can pumpkins take over something? They're inanimate." Her fingers didn't stop moving. Her tab was due at Amanda & Barrett's; easily done. Mark wanted to know when she'd be coming by with a new load of weaponry for him to sell, and invited her to dinner on Aura Day. She'd talk to him after the pumpkins.

Her brother Xan was writing from somewhere called Polpota Harbor to tell her that he was fine; the small box was from him as well and held a handful of tiny, bright colored shells that he wrote might make good decorations on any water-based item she felt like making. She'd visit his house in the middle of town and check on things there, see if his garden was being taken care of and whatever monsters he hadn't taken with him were being fed.

Setting her mail inside on the small table next to the door, Rei nodded to her Sproutling and vaulted her front gate like she always did, falling into the easy lope that her brother had taught her years ago. With any luck, she'd be done flattening those pumpkins before things got hot again. Mana Goddess, but she hated the really hot days of summer. They were just so…hot.

———

Rei loped into Domina after only an hour instead of her usual ninety minutes, something that pleased her no end even with the weird turn her day had predictably taken. Most people took the trip between her home and town in something close to three hours—her brother Xan, older than her by about four years, could make it in half an hour and not even be out of breath. She'd be jealous if she didn't love him.

Not even pausing by the sign Rei swung left, loping over the cobblestone bridge that spanned Domina's stream into Mana Square, waving at the performers Diddle and Cappella in their usual places by the fountain as she went past them.

Pelican was dithering on the path between the square and the western fields; she waved Rei on while moaning that she wouldn't be able to do her job with those nasty pumpkins over there.

Rei made a mental note to have someone sit Pelican down with a cup of tea once this was over. The poor bird was working herself into hysterics.

Clearing the last of the houses, Rei was confronted by a startling sight: the western fields were ringed by some of the most vicious-looking jack-o'-lanterns she'd ever seen, and all of the candle-flame eyes were watching a pair of _Elf children_ move about in the middle of the cleared space.

The boy—who looked younger than the girl by about a year and was dressed in a green robe tied with a rope-belt and purple boots—turned to his sister with a pretty good attempt at evil laughter, fists on his hips, head flung back.

"Bud, stop laughing like that," scolded the girl, putting her hands on her own hips and frowning. She wore a knee-length robe of pinkish-red with white sleeves that was cut like a dress, baring her clan tattoos on right arm and left leg. On her feet were a plain pair of blue leather boots. Neither noticed Rei half-hidden behind a tangle of pumpkin vines heavy with leaves.

_Children,_ Rei thought to herself, impressed. _Can't be more than ten or twelve, and they've got the whole silly town terrified with nothing more than a handful of Autumn Solstice decorations. Incredible. _

Bud gave his sister a cocky smile and pushed his shoulders back, gesturing at their 'army'. "Lisa, you and I shall rule the world as brother and sister, and all those pathetic beings will kneel before us!" he declared in a voice that hadn't even broken yet, even though he tried his best to make it sound deep and intimidating. "Come! Let us gloat together! MWAHA-HAHA-HA!"

Lisa rolled her eyes, crossing her arms in disbelief. "Rule the world? With pumpkins? AS IF!" she snorted, sounding more her age than Bud did. Rei found herself liking these two. Pumpkins or not, these seemed like pretty good kids. Lisa's attitude was endearing, and Rei thought that Bud trying to be evil just looked cute.

So she decided that she'd burst his bubble gently, and see if they wouldn't tame down a bit with a meal or two. They certainly looked like they needed someone to feed them. Stepping into the open, she called, "Your sister's got a point. The first pack of Rabites to come along would eat your army down to the stems."

Bud and Lisa whirled to face her, his blue eyes and her amethyst ones gone wide in triangular faces. Bud recovered from his surprise first, putting his fists back on his hips and sneering arrogantly at her. "You! Kneel before Bud the Malignant if ya know what's good for ya!"

Rei merely stood there, hands resting easily on the pommels of her knives. Lisa sighed in irritation at her brother's melodrama. "Why don't you get your pumpkins to make her kneel?" she suggested grumpily.

Her brother grinned. "Great idea! But first we have to teach this scum a lesson!" And from out of nowhere he produced a large, cast-iron frying pan decorated with a yellow star on the bottom. Rei's eyebrow went up in interest. Lisa picked up a broom that had been leaning against a leering pumpkin, giving it a whirl as though it were a staff.

"Cubs," Rei chided, tugging at her arm-guards to make sure they were in place, "should not play at warlords." And she proceeded to give them a thorough lesson in bare-handed combat. She ducked and wove between swings of skillet and broom that would have left her head ringing, tripping unwary feet and carefully tossing them over her shoulder again and again.

The children landed from those throws better than she expected they would and changed tactics; Bud kept coming in for close combat while Lisa stepped back and pulled out a flute. Rei slipped past Bud and snagged the flute away, clucking her tongue in disapproval. "No help from elementals, cub," she told the startled girl at the same time the fighter swung away from Bud's side-swing. "You stand or fall on your own two feet."

Eventually the two stayed on the ground where Rei had put them, out of breath but hardly bruised despite all of their abrupt meetings with the grass. Rei stood a few feet away with a collection of magical instruments at her feet and a frown that barely hid her smile. They had potential, these two.

"Now then," Rei spoke, keeping her voice just on this side of disapproving. "I hope you've learned just how dangerous it can be to fight someone who's got a lot more experience than you. Not to mention that your chosen weapons aren't much use against someone who makes a living fighting." And she pushed down her arm-guard to show the scars decorating the flesh there.

Bud pushed himself into a sitting position, eyes wide with unmistakable hero worship. "You're amazing!" he half-shouted breathlessly in an upper baritone—his real voice. "Please, you gotta make me your apprentice!"

Lisa sat up as well, a blush turning her cheeks red. _She_ knew that Rei's knives could have been turned against them at any time—and that the fighter had deliberately held back. "I'm sorry about Bud," she apologized. "He's such a prankster. My name's Lisa."

Rei kept her smile firmly buried, but let the frown go to crouch in front of them both. "Well, Lisa, do you think you and your brother can behave yourself and not take over the world with a bunch of oversized gourds?" They nodded enthusiastically, hope rising in their eyes. Rei wouldn't have been able to say no even if she'd wanted to. "Then I guess I have last thing to ask you."

"What's that?" Bud queries.

Rei let herself smile at last, her normal slow, easy smile. "You two hungry? 'Cause I don't know about you, but I've got a craving for some pancakes."

Broad smiles unfurled. "You mean it?" Bud demanded, jumping up and grabbing Rei's arm. "You mean we're your apprentices?" Rei nodded and he whooped, the surrounding pumpkins dwindling away into normal, ordinary gourds looking rather apologetic without their fearsome scowls.

Lisa turned shining eyes to her new teacher. "Wow," she breathed, "how generous!"

Rei gave her a quick smile, then slid her gaze back to watching Bud dancing around and waving his frying pan. "I'm a fighter, not a monster, cubling. I don't leave children to starve. Besides, you two have a lot of potential and I'm looking forward to watching you grow into it."

A pink-clad arm shot out, catching Bud around the middle and sweeping him off his feet into an under-arm hold, hands and feet dangling, frying pan hanging from loose fingers. Too surprised to struggle or demand to be let down, Bud simply hung in Rei's grip as the fighter walked over to the instruments pile and slung a marimba onto her back and a harp onto the hip opposite Bud. A drum and Lisa's flute lay on the grass, and Rei jerked her chin at them. "Come on, Lisa, pick those up and let's get moving. I'm hungry."

Lisa complied and trotted alongside Rei as they headed out of the western fields back into Domina proper, passing Pelican on the way. Rei called to the mail-carrier, letting her know that the problem had been taken care of and she was taking her new students to get some breakfast. Pelican took off like a shot like Rei had expected she would; the news would be spreading around town before she and her protégés could even get to the pub thanks to gossip-loving Pelican. By the time Bud and his sister will be fed properly, everyone will know—well, except maybe Xan, but Rei'll send him a letter about it—that the Elf children will be Off Limits to any kind of persecution about the pumpkin thing.

And Rei was right. About the time that Mark and Jennifer's daughter Rachel was bringing three large plates full of pancakes, Jennifer herself came into the pub with butterfly-wings atremble. That was just perfect; Jennifer was one of the other biggest gossips in town. Between her and Pelican, Rei's foundlings will be well protected.

"Rei, dear, may I have a word with you over there?" Jennifer asked seriously. Bud and Lisa watched with anxious eyes as Rei put down her fork and nodded at her friend.

"You two keep eating," she told the youngsters calmly, pushing her chair back and following Jennifer over to the bar, safely out of earshot of the twins. She still had a bit of a hard time believing that the two Elves were the same age, what with Bud's lack of height compared to his sister, but the irritated way in which Bud had corrected her a few minutes ago convinced Rei that it was truth. She was laying good odds that he'd shoot up like a weed by the time he turned fourteen.

Jennifer cut right to the point. "Are those two safe, Rei?"

Rei gave the woman one of her rarer, wicked smiles, one that hasn't been seen much since Xan went off on his own. "Come on, Jen," she replied lightly, tilting her head towards the children. "Do those look like dangerous criminals to you?"

Jennifer looked. She saw two young, underfed children happily attacking thick stacks of pancakes drowned in syrup and butter with the kind of table manners one can expect in older children. Somewhat messy, but ninety-seven percent of the food was going into their mouths and nowhere else. Most of the mess was syrup, since the stuff didn't seem to want to remain on the pancakes and kept dripping off on the trip to hungry mouths. And the plates caught most of it.

"They've been on their own, they've had some problems, but they're good kids, Jen," Rei said softly, watching her charges with a fond smile. "They just need a firm hand to keep them out of trouble. I've already had them take care of the pumpkins. Don't worry about them, okay?"

Jennifer's wings opened and closed thoughtfully for a few moments, one slender finger tapping the woman's pointed chin. Then she smiled. "All right, Rei. If they've got you to keep an eye on them, I'm sure we won't have more than the usual childish pranks happening." She switched topics. "Are you coming to dinner on Aura Day? Your apprentices are invited, of course."

"Sure. Do you want me to bring anything?"

"If you could make dessert, that will be fine," Jennifer replied gaily, giving the fighter a quick, sisterly peck to the cheek and heading for the door. She waved as she left, calling, "I've got to get back to the shop, dear, it's my turn to watch it. Bye!"

"Bye! Oh, and tell Mark I'll be bringing a new load in next Gnome Day!" Rei called back, going back to her cooling breakfast. Bud hastily swallowed his current mouthful, suddenly nervous.

"Master Rei, what did she want?"

Rei mournfully sighed at the few drops of syrup left in the cat-shaped pouring-pot, then turned at a tug on her arm-guard which turned out to be Rachel with another pot. Both Elves watched her pour on syrup and held their breaths when she glanced up at them. "Jennifer wanted to know if we were going to be coming to dinner this Aura Day," she said lightly. "What kind of dessert do you two want to bring?"

The two relaxed, immediately offering suggestions that ranged from cheesecake—_You put cheese in a cake? _Rei wondered to herself, a little nauseated at the thought—to anything with chocolate. Rei had finished her breakfast and the twins had had seconds by the time they'd agreed to bring a double-chocolate cake with topped with fresh fruit.

That was when Rachel reappeared, silently handing Rei a strip of paper and waiting shyly. Rei perused the list, shook her head with a mock-frown, and pulled a handful of Lucre out of her pouch. Bud and Lisa's eyes widened.

"Breakfast cost that much?" Lisa gasped. Rachel shook her head with a tiny smile, Rei just snorted as she handed the money over and pocketed the list before shooing Rachel off gently.

"Of course not, goose. I've got a running tab here that I pay off every couple of weeks, that's all. Today's the day I settle it. Stop panicking, for Mana Goddess' sake, you two," she added irritably when they'd settled a bit. "Even if breakfast _had_ cost that much I wouldn't have begrudged you. You're growing children and you need to eat properly." She paused, a slow smile replacing the frown.

Bud perked. "What, Master Rei?"

Rei waved a hand. "Oh, nothing. I was just thinking that Trent is going to love you two. He's always complaining that most of the things he grows never get eaten fast enough." A soft chuckle. "He won't be able to say that anymore."

"Oh." The two looked at each other and then back at Rei. "Who's Trent?"

"You'll see." The fighter pushed back her chair again and stood, waiting as Bud and Lisa did the same, and hid a smile at their slightly sticky mouths, wondering if these two were always going to be this endearing. She led them to Mark's home where she explained about the wheel to a disappointed Teapo and apologized. Teapo sighed but was still relieved that now she didn't have to worry about saving 50,000 Lucre (which made the twins' eyes pop), and got the twins to wash their faces at the kitchen sink.

After checking on her brother Xan's home and finding everything in order (one of his neighbors has been watering the sibling to her Lil' Cactus and the monsters had been stocked with plenty of food and water) Rei shooed her charged down the road towards home. She made their first lesson be on how to use the ground-eating, energy-saving stride that Xan had taught Rei.

———

"—and this is the second floor," Rei said, waving a hand at the space beneath the eaves of her cottage. Bud and Lisa ooh'ed happily, continuing to poke their cat-curious noses into everything just as they had done downstairs. She'd already shown them the monster corral, where a grazing Nip and Tsuta had shown just as much interest in the children as the twins had shown in them, the workshops ("No forging without adult supervision!") and introduced them to Trent. The grandfatherly tree had, indeed, been thrilled to learn that the cottage would have two more mouths to feed.

The twins had been awed that a tree could talk, let alone grow both fruits and vegetable on his gnarled, arched roots.

Rei looked her room over, considering where the twins could sleep. It seemed inadequate to have them bunk on the floor, but…her eyes fell on the broad, padded bench underneath one of the windows. It was quite enough to hold two children who hadn't hit their real growth spurts yet—at least until Rei had gotten the small room in the main split in the trunk of her tree repaired. A storm a few weeks ago had caused a heavy branch to fall on top of it—making Rei glad that's she'd moved into the main second-floor room that had been where her brother had slept. It was almost there, it just needed a roof and a few coats of whitewash to seal drafts. A month of work, maybe a little more, depending on how long it took to get the rest of the lumber, thatch, and whitewash that she needed. For now, though, the door to it had been hidden behind a privacy screen.

But the bench, yes, the bench would work as a temporary bed. Rei had slept on it herself a time or two when she'd been watching the rain fall beyond the window, so she could vouch its' comfort. Decision made, Rei looked for her students and found Bud investigating Lil' Cactus while Lisa stood in the middle of the room with her fingers clenched tight together.

"What's wrong, Lisa?" Rei asked, walking over. The Elf girl looked up at her, uncertainty in her eyes.

"You said back in Domina that we had potential. And you made us your apprentices without any arguing at all. Why? Were you telling the truth?"

"I don't lie," Rei said, sitting down on the bench that she'd marked as the children's temporary bed and crossing her legs. "Not about things that will affect lives. You have…incredible amounts of potential just barely tapped; only blind fools wouldn't be able to see it."

"Miss Kathinja wouldn't like hearing you say that," Bud muttered from by the fireplace. "Or Nunuzac."

Dust-gold eyebrows climbed for Rei's hairline. "Nunuzac? The conjurer who was in the war and got himself trapped in one of his own summoning circles? You were taught by _him_?"

Lisa ducked her head shyly. "Well, he's a teacher at the magic Academy in Geo. So's Miss Kathinja. We liked her best out of all the teachers; she was the only one who put up with us when our spells would go wrong."

"Yeah," Bud added, "'cause they'd go wrong big."

"And they would, if someone didn't keep a careful eye on what you were doing," agreed Rei calmly. "If you aren't practiced in controlling your magic, the more you have the more likely it is to spill over into what you're doing and mess it up. We'll make control a big part of your first lessons here. Oh," and here Rei tilted her head to gaze at her new students sidelong, "and as for _why_—still want to know?"

Both twins nodded.

"Because I wanted to. And that's all the reason I'm going to give you for now." Their faces fell, and Rei got up to shoo them back downstairs. "Now, since you're going to be living here, you're going to be doing chores. It's good discipline. You can start by going and feeding the monsters. G'wan. Scat."

Cheerfully complaining about her tyranny, the youngsters headed downstairs and out to the monster barn. Rei took the dozen strides to her bed and plopped down, eyeing the afternoon sunlight pouring into the room from both windows.

"Whew. It's going to be livelier around here, that's for sure, isn't it, Lil' Cactus?" The spine-ball nodded enthusiastically, then listened as his master told him about finding the two Elves currently audible through said open windows, being pounced upon by a hungry Rabite and Rattler Boa.

———

Miss Kathinja: one of the favorite teachers at the Academy in the desert oasis city of Geo. She's part basilisk, which means aside from having the ability to turn people to stone if she glares at them hard enough, she can also do magical effects—such as, according to a couple of the other Academy students, making their heads explode.

Nunuzac: As mentioned, he was a powerful conjurer during the last great war, and ended it trapped in one of his own summoning circles. He now teaches the lighter spells of conjury—read magic tricks—to students and does his best to convince them that 'winning' a magicks fight is to make your enemy laugh so hard that he can't do anything when you run away. He's gruff and plays the part of a court jester in the hopes that promising youngsters will never be in another war.


	3. Lost Princess

Et viola! Chapter three! I got bit hard by a Rabite-shaped plot bunny and a friend is lending me their Playstation, so the story is chugging along nicely. Now if only I could get my other fics to behave as well… n,.,n!

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"Okay, you two!" Rei called from the gate to her two apprentices standing on the front porch. "I'm heading to Domina to drop off the shipment Mark asked for! I should be back by this evening, so try not to blow anything up, okay?"

"Got it, Master Rei!" Lisa called back, waving. Bud glowered at the fighter, arms crossed.

"You're just trying to get out of helping us clean the house!" he shouted, winning himself a wide smile and a laugh from his teacher.

"Okay, I guess that's half-true," she laughed, "but I really do need to get these things to Mark. I'll see you two later!" And, hefting the bundle of weapons and various pieces of armor more comfortably on her back, Rei took off for Domina with Nip bouncing along behind.

Bud turned to Lisa and grinned. "See?" he said triumphantly, "Told you I could get her to smile."

"It's harder than it looks," Lisa sighed back. "I wonder why she's so serious all of the time?" The two Elf children had been here over a week now, and their days had been much the same: breakfast in the morning, made by either Rei or Lisa (Bud had been forbidden to make food on his own after mixing up a potion he'd been working on with apricat juice), chores, then a couple of hours worth of lessons, then lunch, then chores, then dinner, then some free time before bed. The routine had only been broken once when Rei went to meet someone in Domina and accompany them to Gaeus on Luon Highway.

In all of that time, the twins had only seen their master smile a handful of times, usually in response to the antics of either her pet monsters or to Bud's blunt observations. Lisa earned smiles by doing everything to the best of her ability—and her ability was something that seemed to surprise Rei more than expected.

Bud tucked his hands behind his head, leaning back to look up at the green leaves rustling in the morning breeze. "Rachel says it's because Xan's not here," he said absently, naming the daughter of Mark the weapons-seller. "She thinks that Rei just doesn't see much to smile about now that he isn't around so much. I think it makes sense," he tells the branches above him.

Lisa looked at him sidelong, a gesture she'd picked up from their teacher. "When did Rachel tell you this?"

Bud glanced over. "On Aura, the night we were at their house for dinner. All the adults were outside and you were taking a nap 'cause the monsters'd worn you out. She talks to people when she knows they're listening. Rei talks to her all the time."

Lisa's fingers curled in the end of her ponytail. "Huh. I guess I gotta stop ditzing whenever we go into town." She sighed, then stretched, this time in conscious echo of Rei. "Come on, Bud. We might as well get started on those chores Rei set us today."

Groaning, Bud followed after his sister to the orchard to talk to Trent and see how the latest crop was coming.

———

Almost ninety minutes later Rei loped into Domina, panting under the weight of all of the equipment slung on her back. How in the name of Salamander did Xan used to carry a load like this as if it weighed nothing? Okay, so she was jealous sometimes of Xan, but she'd train and she'd get stronger. Her wandering brother would be very surprised when he came home and saw how much better she'd gotten.

Mark was thrilled with the load. Without Rei his shop would never see Wendel Silver axes, shields, or rings. Never see swords made from Vizel Gold or from precious gems—the latter weren't really appropriate for fighting since stone didn't take shock as well as metal, but they made lovely figure-pieces and show-blades.

He'd never see instruments able to summon enough elemental power to flatten almost any opposition. But then, without Mark, Rei wouldn't be able to earn enough money to support herself and her little group on monster-hunting alone. It was a fair trade-off.

Rei left him with his new acquisitions and picked Nip up, cuddling the ball of fluff as she walked over to Amanda & Barrett's for a quick hello to Rachel.

The fighter stopped in her tracks just inside the door when she found the man who'd called himself Elazul looming over a petrified Rachel, his hands clenched in the edges of his green cloak. He was dusty, sweaty, and obviously worried out of his mind. Rei set down Nip and slipped over, only to have him whirl to face her. "Do not interrupt!" he barked out before glaring down at the young girl, her fairy-like butterfly wings trembling. "Speak up!"

The fighter wanted badly to grab a chair and break it over his head, but she knew that would only upset Rachel even more (not to mention it would go onto her tab), so she refrained from indulging herself and kept in mind that something had to be wrong.

A hint of desperation had crept into Elazul's voice and his hands tightened around the edges of his cloak. "What are you hiding?" he half-pleaded.

Rei sighed and tapped his shoulder politely, the left one, the one that didn't have that spike of crystal armor protecting his dominant side. "Excuse me?" His body twitched like a horse that had gotten bit by a fly; he turned to look at her over his shoulder in surprise. "What's wrong?"

He faced her more fully for a moment, hands gone still in his cloak. "A friend is missing," he told her, and began to turn back to Rachel.

Rei sidestepped to keep his attention on her, Nip a caramel shadow at her feet. She made certain that those startling sapphire eyes were looking at her as she said, "Maybe I can help. What does she look like?"

He seemed taken aback at her reaction, but he willingly told her, "She wears a white dress and has long hair." The anger that he'd shown to Rachel drained away, leaving a young man that couldn't be much older than Rei herself, new to his sword and the way of protecting. "She's like a sister to me," he added quietly. "I am worried. She can't defend herself with weapons or anything and she's out there somewhere by herself."

"Then let's look for her together!"

Elazul took a step back, dismay written stark on his handsome features. "No, you mustn't…" he began, then shook his head and stepped forward again. "No, I would be grateful!"

"Then let's get…" Rei trailed off when she noticed that Rachel had taken a few hesitant steps towards them. One dusty-gold eyebrow rose. "Yes, Rachel?" she prompted gently.

Elazul blinked, then crouched down to be on eye level with the shy girl as her lips moved. He was the only one who caught what she whispered to him. Then she offered something small and polished to him with a barely audible, "Here."

The young man took it, Rei peering over her shoulder to find him holding a stone egg in a dappled green-and-black, not translucent enough to be see-through but enough to let the light make it glow. "What's this?" he asked Rachel softly, trying to make up for scaring her earlier. Rei liked this softer side; it suited him better than 'bully'. Rachel whispered something else that only Elazul could hear, then stood there looking up at them through her bangs.

"That's Mekiv jade," Rei observed, watching Elazul jump like a startled cat and nearly drop the egg. The breeze he made wafted a faint, flowery scent past the fighter's sensitive nose and she inhaled carefully through her mouth and nose. "And water-lily perfume."

"Water-li…!" Elazul brought the egg to his own nose and breathed in, a glimmer of light shivering in the jewel on his chest. His eyes went wide. "It smells like Pearl!"

"Thank you, Rachel," the fighter told her young friend, who smiled shyly back. "This is a perfect clue." Elazul made his own effusive thanks and an apology for scaring her, then hauled Rei out of the pub with eagerness practically vibrating off of him in a tangible cloud.

"Come on, we have to hurry!"

"Whoa, Elazul!" He didn't have the leverage that Niccolo would have; she was easily able to dig in her heels enough to stop them both, and sent a quick smile to the Rabite helping by pulling on one of her leg-wrap banners. "The Mekiv Caverns aren't far from here; two hours' walk at most. But you can't go rushing off without thinking. If you burn out all of your energy before you find your friend Pearl then you won't be much use if you have to fight."

That made her new companion pause, and he nodded after a moment's thought. "You're right. I need to stop running around like an idiot. Besides," he added with a sheepish wince, "I don't even know which way the caverns are. Or your name, for that matter. How did you know mine?"

Rei flashed a smile at him that seemed to throw him further off his stride than her offer to help had, and stuck out her hand. "I'm Rei Venstry. I live in Haven Tree Cottage just up the road. I was there the other day when you got Duelle riled up so I heard you say it. The caverns are south of here, and we _will_ move quickly," she promised, "but I have to insist that Nip set our pace. We go as fast as he goes."

"That…Rabite?" Elazul queried in disbelief as he briefly shook her hand. "Are you certain?"

Rei rolled her eyes and grabbed him by the shoulder, digging her fingers in a bit to catch hold of both cloak and the vest beneath it. "Don't doubt the bunny monster," she chided, giving Nip a nod. He flicked his ears and took off at surprising speeds. "He keeps up with _me_ after all." Elazul let out a yelp when Rei followed after, dragging him along with her.

Within a few strides, however, he got the idea and stretched his legs out into a decent variation of a wolf-lope. Rei found herself fighting to keep up with _him_ after several minutes for all that Nip was the one setting the pace. The Rabite had been eating his spiny carrots when she hadn't been looking, apparently, because he was going even faster than his sprite had anticipated.

"We are going to be having a long chat about this sort of thing when we get home, fur-ball," she called to him as they ran—and it _was_ running now—to be given another ear-flick and an unmistakable bunny-grin. _Oh, yes. We are definitely going to be having a talk about him being sneaky. I haven't been feeding him apricats and peach-puppies to have him be scheming. _

"What have you been feeding that Rabite?" Elazul demanded as they ran, echoing her thoughts; he had plenty of breath for running. Rei determined that she would flat-out run to Domina every day if she needed to in order to build up stamina; for her to be this out of breath was ridiculous!

"Nothing that should make him this fast," Rei slung back. "Is da poor widdle swordsman getting tiwed?"

Elazul flung his head up, leveling a decent glare at her. "I can go faster."

Rei grinned wickedly at him, an expression that hadn't been seen since Xan had left on his adventures. "I think that was a challenge." She found her second wind and forgot her own warning about burning too much energy; she sprang ahead to overtake a startled Nip, who chattered at her and sped up. Elazul gaped at Rei's back for a moment, then pumped his legs harder.

Rei found herself grinning for the rest of the half hour it took for them to reach Mekiv Caverns.

———

"I do not…concede defeat!" panted Elazul just outside the entrance to the caverns, one finger lifted in defiance while the other hand propped his weight above his knee. Rei leaned against the sun-dappled stone wall and grinned at him, somewhat out of breath but with plenty of energy left to go forth and do battle with. It was her suggestion that had them cooling off a bit out here before they went into the wet dim of the caverns; she had no intention of allowing either of them to get sick by going from hot to chilled too fast.

"Perhaps we'll have to settle the matter another time," she replied with a lilt to her voice that Xan would have had no problem recognizing, even if the townsfolk hadn't heard it in a while. "In the meantime, we have a cave to investigate. Cool enough?"

"I've got a hardy immune system." He made to enter the main cavern only to have Rei step in front of him.

"That wasn't what I asked, Elazul. Have you cooled down enough?"

Grudgingly he replied, "Not quite."

"Then walk a little more. If you don't, you know you're just going to stiffen up." She followed her own advice, loosening muscles that were complaining about not being stretched before she'd run; she didn't hurt as much as she should since she'd warmed up by carrying all that stuff to Mark this morning. Nip just sat next to the entrance, nibbling some of the foliage in curiosity only to wrinkle his tiny muzzle and spit them out. That made Rei laugh. "I guess your tastebuds are too refined for common plants, furball," she chuckled, receiving another ear-flick and a mournful chirr in reply.

After a few more minutes in which Elazul slowly walked in impatient circles, Rei finally stepped aside and let him go first into Mekiv, blinking as her eyes adjusted from summer sunlight to the dim luminescence of the caves. Goosebumps ran up her arms when she stepped into the damp chill that told her that these caves were still 'living'—that is, still wet and shaping themselves into ever more fantastic shapes.

Elazul stopped a few strides in, his head thrown back as he breathed in deep. Rei's sharp ears caught the sound of a soft chime, like two pure crystals being tapped together, and a definite ripple of light spun out of the stone on Elazul's chest. "I sense brilliance nearby," he breathed, opening his eyes. "It must be Pearl!"

Rei eyed him askance. 'Sensed brilliance'? She wondered if he was using a short-range locate-spell or if he'd invoked the Law of Similarity, because for the life of her, the only way she'd figured that Pearl really had been here was a lingering trace of water-lily perfume.

Elazul led the way towards the left fork, bypassing one of Duelle's fellow Onion Company that nodded cheerfully enough to them, and—Rei's lip curled into a silent, heart-felt snarl—edged past a pair of Boinks that were hanging out in front of the tunnels leading to the rest of the caverns.

She'd _never_ liked Boinks for some reason. It wasn't that they were _dangerous_, not when they resembled a child's toy hippo made of candy-cane-striped pink cloth with six legs instead of four, with about as much aggression as that child's toy. Oh, and little hand-sized, leaf-like wings that fluttered like mad when they waddled. No, the worst thing a Boink could do is to teleport a person to the end of their tails—and that distance could vary a lot. One of Xan's letters had described him getting Boinked clear across Madora Beach, which was nearly five miles of sand and caves like the ones she was in now. Maybe it was their sheer inconvenience ninety percent of the time that made her dislike them so much?

Putting her unreasonable distaste of Boinks aside, Rei focused instead on that soft chime and the light that had spun out of the stone on Elazul's chest. Something about that stone nagged at her, a bit of forgotten lore trying to work itself free of the dust of the depths of her mind. However, since forcing memories like that in the past had only made them harder to reach, she put that aside as well and followed Elazul into the left-hand tunnel.

After that, _she _took the lead, taking them through the seemingly-unending labyrinth that are the Mekiv Caverns. She was depending on a mixture of half-instinct, half-forgotten memories from when Xan used to bring her here to train. And always that faint hint of water-lily perfume that led them on a winding path through the varying levels. The caves in this system were linked together by short tunnels and water-carved, stair-like flows that never were more than seven 'steps' in height.

Not to mention they were full of monsters. Rei and Elazul tangled with more monsters in the first few caves than she'd met with Niccolo for at least half of Luon. Bloodsuckers, Gloomoths, and Mushbooms ran rampant down here in the dim and the dark, as well as at least a half-dozen others that were all-too-ready to take on a pair of humans and one tame Rabite.

It was during these fights that Rei discovered a major character point of Elazul; he was chivalrous to a fault and beyond that. He kept stepping between Rei and her chosen opponents to employ that curved scimitar blade of his in her defense—whether or not (usually not) she needed it.

The gesture just made her smile, reminding her of those early training sessions with Xan when he would do much the same with his own two-handed greatsword, when the monsters _would _be too much for her. Elazul did start getting on her nerves about the sixth or seventh cavern in, when she nearly stabbed him because he came between her and a Iffish right when she was lunging for it.

Elazul was a protector; she got that. She also understood that after a while protecting had probably become a habit for him. Still, it was starting to get very annoying. She swore to herself that if he did it again she'd put him in the dirt on general principle.

Five minutes and three caves later Elazul looked up in surprise from his sprawl on the ground as Rei finished off a particularly stubborn Pincher Crab with a well-aimed stab to the back of the shell. "Elazul," Rei chided with a grin, "it's sort of counterproductive to get smacked by the enemy you just turned away from to attack another beast. If you're going to expose your back, do it with the dead."

"What the hell just happened?" he demanded, rubbing at his back where she'd landed a sly kick when he'd gotten between her and one monster too many.

She helped him up by grabbing his arm and pulling him to his feet, still chuckling. "I told you. You got smacked when you turned your back on a living beastie. Maybe you should try killing your own opponents before helping me with mine, hmm?"

Blinking at the strength in the slender hand gripping his bicep, Elazul nodded after a moment. "Uh, yeah. You're probably right. Thanks."

She let him go, her footsteps light as she walked forward a few paces before she turned and gestured towards the next tunnel. "You're welcome. Come on, the deeper caves are this way. Go _that_ way, and you end up in a dead-end." And she pointed to another tunnel leading right.

———

Elazul watched Rei gesticulate as she described some of her favorite ways to forge weapons, an animated smile on her face. They'd been in the caverns for well over twenty minutes and Rei walked the place with the easy familiarity one reserved for childhood playgrounds. He had no idea that virtually all of her confidence in their direction was false—and Rei had chosen not to enlighten him to that fact.

They were walking because his back was still sore, not only from that blow from behind, but because he'd ignored one of her earlier warnings and had tried running when he'd gotten impatient. Her caution about walking across damp stone ground—especially the water-slick flooring of Mekiv Caverns—had unfortunately gone unheeded. At least Rei hadn't laughed.

"Something bugs me, Elazul," she said suddenly, vowels softened in an accent he's never heard anywhere else before. A finger tapped her lower lip, her other hand resting against the small of her back. "We're over three-quarters of the way to the bottom cavern where a very big bad monster is supposed to live. And I have to say I haven't seen anything that would indicate any fights other than ours."

Elazul thought back on that. "You're right. There hasn't been. So?"

"Well, you say for certain that your lass is in here somewhere. But there's no signs of fighting. So…how did she get past every single one of the monsters?" That stopped him cold. Rei even walked past him a few steps before she stopped as well. Turning, she quirked her lips into a wry smile. "Hadn't thought of that, I see. What interesting people you are." And then she kept on walking.

It took Elazul several moments to unfreeze and stride after her, remembering in time that the floors of this cavern were as damp as the others.

The rest of the trip was spent in stilted conversation, mostly Rei talking about the people of Domina…and Xan. Elazul heard a lot about Rei's adored older brother in the ten long minutes after Rei had asked him how Pearl had gotten down here without getting hurt.

Rei was telling him about the letter in which Xan had written about getting Boinked clear across Madora Beach, and how he thought that these caverns were lit by some luminescence in the stones themselves when they entered a narrower cavern than the others, one that had a liberal scattering of stalactites and stalagmites. Rei stopped short at the sight of a woman waiting there, walking back and forth across the path with obvious impatience.

She figured it wasn't Pearl when Elazul didn't throw himself on her in relief; Salamander's flames, the man even seemed to raise his hackles at the sight of her, his stride turning into a stalk before her very eyes. Curious, Rei gave the woman a more thorough look-over. A look that was returned in spades from beneath auburn bangs.

A pair of large orange flowers were caught up in the sides of the woman's high bun, her winsome curves wrapped in a skin-tight satin green dress whose skirt was split all the way up to her thighs. _Very_ impractical.

Rei immediately chastised herself for that uncharitable thought; yes, the woman's dress was form fitting all the way up from her hips, but so was her own and she could fight in hers just peachy. But really, heeled boots like that in here was just asking for a sprained ankle or worse. "You sure are late," the woman said in annoyance, turning to face them. Rei wasn't sure how she managed to sound impatient and sultry at the same time, but wow, the woman managed. A thumb rose to jerk over her shoulder at the entrance to the lowest cavern in Mekiv. "Pearl is this way. Hurry and go help her."

Elazul stalked forward in full protector-mode, where Rei proceeded to glare a hole in between his shoulder-blades, and raised his sword in a threatening manner. "Who are you?" he demanded, that damned arrogant mask Rei had hoped she'd broken now firmly back in place. "Why do you know Pearl's name?"

The stranger rolled her eyes, crossing her arms over a well-defined chest. "Duh. I talked to her."

Elazul's knuckles whitened on his sword's hilt. "Then why didn't you _stop her_??"

Breath expelled into an exasperated sound. "Do I _look_ like that girl's Knight to you, pretty boy? It's not my job to protect her." Sauntering around a taut Elazul, the woman smiled wickedly at Rei. "Oh, and one more thing," she purred to the startled fighter. "You'd best stay away from these people."

Elazul moved to stand in front of Rei again, and she stuck her foot out, sending him sprawling for the second time as he tried to hold to dignity and balance and failed. "How is it you know of us?" he growled from the floor as Rei stepped neatly over him to confront the stranger.

"Let the girls talk, 'Lazul," she told him quietly, standing in the woman's personal space with her chin held high, gazing proudly into the stranger's eyes. "If I was going to stay away," Rei told the woman, "I wouldn't have bothered helping in the first place. Nice try."

Red stepped back a little, raising her hands in a conciliatory gesture and pretending to ignore the knives dancing in glittering arcs across scarred knuckles. "I warned you," she replied lightly, starting to walk back the way Rei and Elazul had come. She cast one wicked smile over her shoulder before she disappeared into the dimness. "Hope you don't turn to stone or anything."

_Hope you don't turn to stone…_ That phrase rang in the knife-fighter's head and ripped the memory of a book's page from the dust of forgetfulness. Rei stared in shock at the young man growling as he got to his feet. _Salamander's flames, he's a _Jumi!

Elazul snarled as he got to his feet, shooting a dark look up at Rei as he brushed off the front of his clothes. His hand froze in mid-swipe when a feminine scream rang out from the cavern ahead. _"AAAAAAHHH!"_

"Pearl!!" Elazul roared, and sprang ahead, forgetting the stranger, forgetting Rei, forgetting everything but his charge and her danger.

Rei muttered a curse about fools who rush into things without thinking and looked uneasily back over her shoulder, but the woman had disappeared. Feeling unsettled about everything since she'd stepped foot in Mekiv, Rei followed after her headstrong companion with Nip on her heels.

Beyond, in the truly massive cavern that was where the scream had come from, Rei caught up with Elazul just as everything shook around them. Two jaws dropped in shock at the ape-like creature that leaped out of hiding and matched the size of the vaulted cavern, covered in ragged, dirty fur that had at one time probably been white-lilac. Rei's attention, though, was marginally less for the beast than it was for the crude pick-axe the thing was carrying in one meaty hand, a trademark of a particular kind of monster.

"A Du'Inke??" Rei shouted over the rumble of shaking stone in disbelief. One hand rose to point at the monster. "What in Flammy's teeth is a _Du'Inke_ doing down _here_?? He's supposed to be a jungle creature!"

Elazul ignored her, letting out a warcry and leaping at the thirty-foot beast with total disregard for his safety. "He's insane, right?" Rei asked Nip, who clacked his teeth in reply. "Right, he's insane," she agreed, then yanked out her knives and raced forward. "Let's go save the idiot from getting turned into monster toe-jam."

Neither of the fighters wanted the Du'Inke to land any sort of blow, so they tag-teamed him, attacking one after the other. Elazul blinked in disbelief when Rei loosed a combination of blows that sent the monster skidding back on dirty sandals, and unleashed his own Iai Strike so as not to be outdone. In a surprisingly short amount of time the monster let out a roaring screech and collapsed, the strength of his voice shaking loose the stones of the ceiling to bury him.

Rei danced clear of the falling rubble, snatching up several large crystals and a handful of large Lucre coins that had fallen with the stones. She offered a few of each to Elazul, who shook his head and stood clear from the magically-fading pile of rocks and buried Du'Inke, lifting his head and closing his eyes to concentrate.

"Pearl," he said aloud, "Where are you?" His jewel—core, if Rei remembered the term accurately—flashed again, a repeat of its performance at the entrance of Mekiv. "Answer me!"

For a moment, nothing. Then came an echoing chime on the heels of a paler glow. A dark-blond head poked up above a formation that resembled a small piece of coral reef flowers, followed by a young woman who looked younger than Rei, her long curling hair tied back into two ponytails halfway down. Pearl wore a white dress with a scallop-edged skirt trimmed in red, the close-fitting coat she wore over it had the same design in the sleeves from the elbow out.

It was a bit difficult for Rei to tell in the dim light of the caves, but the lining of the coat looked like it was a pinkish color traced in green like the veins of a leaf or dragonfly's wing, the hem scalloped like the hem of Pearl's dress. Rei was beginning to notice a pattern, there. The only concession in the way of armor was a matched pair of straps acting as shoulder-guards that looked like they'd spent a lot of time in an oyster, all over lumpy pearl.

On the girl's feet were a pair of slippers that had a large, round pearl each on the tops where slipper met with the thick ribbon-silk that wound up Pearl's bare legs to disappear beneath the dress' skirt. Coat and dress were cut low, revealing a modest cleavage as well as the white core set just beneath the dip of her collarbone, shaped like a smooth-edged scallop shell instead of an oval as Elazul's was. Yep, definitely had a theme going.

_Hm. So this is Pearl. She's pretty._

"Elazul?" Pearl piped up, sounding gentle, shy, and relieved.

"Pearl!" Elazul cried, rushing over and catching her by the shoulders. He then gave her the age-old once over that was the same in any race. "Is your core alright?"

_'Core'. I was right,_ Rei thought to herself in amazement as she watched from near the wall. _Mana's grace, but I thought the Jumi had been wiped out in that war so long ago. And yet…I'm seeing not just one, but two. Incredible._

Pearl turned red, batting the Knight's hands away in embarrassment. "Yes."

Elazul sighed in relief, then shook his head in exasperation. "I told you not to go wandering around by yourself! How did you even get here?" He waved a hand at the cavern around them. "There were monsters at almost every step!"

Rei wondered if it was possible for a person's face to get that red without damaging something. Though this time the color seemed to be a mix of irritation and shyness. "I was, um, just thinking…" she whispered.

Elazul caught her hands and tugged lightly to get her to look up at him. "You don't need to think anymore," he told her gently—Rei wanted to smack him, all of a sudden—and smiled. "All you have to do is stay by my side."

"But—!"

"That's enough!"

Pearl's face crumpled. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

Rei levered herself off the wall and sauntered over. "Actually, Elazul, I'll have to side with Pearl on this one. Haven't you ever tried not thinking…ah." She clucked her tongue in mock-sorrow. "I forgot. You make a habit of not thinking. Well, let me say then that most people find it very difficult to not think. It's like asking some not to breathe." She chuckled, resting her hands on the hilts of her knives, Nip a caramel shadow at her feet. "Really, Elazul, if she's put up with you this long she must have the patience of a saint." Rei sent a wink to the startled young woman. "Hiya, kitten."

Pearl ducked behind Elazul, peering shyly around him at the grinning fighter as he retorted with a face gone red, "Stay out of this!"

"Elazul, who's that?"

The Jumi man gazed at the young woman standing so relaxed in front of them, an easy smile on her face and her eyes gleaming with a lot more humor than he'd expect from someone who'd just gone through the same fights he had. "Just someone who helped me find you," he answered quietly. "A strange kind of person."

"Oh.."

"'A strange kind of person'," Rei sighed mournfully to Nip, the Rabite _chirr_ing back up at her in a similar tone. "That's the pot calling the kettle black if I ever heard it. He doesn't even tell her that my name is Rei."

Elazul turned faintly red and turned around. "Well, then, let's go," he said abruptly, beginning to walk out. Halfway across the cavern he paused and half turned. "See you around," he told Rei, giving her a lopsided, uncertain half-smile. Pearl came over, blushing furiously but smiling.

"He always like that?" Rei sighed, winning a soft giggle from her latest 'damsel'.

"Yes. Um…." Pearl twisted her fingers together. "Thank you."

"No problem," Rei grinned. "Let Mr. Stubborn over there know that if you two ever need a hand or something to look me up."

"We're _go_ing!" Elazul called from the mouth of the passageway, and Pearl blushed harder.

"I'm sorry." Pearl did a sketchy, uncertain bob that was probably supposed to be a bow and backed away a step. "I'm going, too. Um…" Her eyes lit up and she reached into the pocket of her coat, pulling out a round stone and—somehow—a lamp shaped like a tulip-bell flower. "Thank you, Rei. This is for everything you've done for me." Then she ran off, trailing a step or two behind her protector as they vanished into the shadows of the passage.

Rei just chuckled, looking at her gifts. The round stone was a granite marble with a dark spot on it that made the whole thing look like an eye, nothing too special. The lamp was pretty, the shade being made of glass tinted a soft medium violet and tilting down at the perfect angle to light the ground just ahead of a person's feet. Its handle was wood and enameled wire, curved to fit comfortably in someone's hand with the wire pretending to be the flower's stem making a leisurely loop or two around the wood.

Tucking the stone into a pocket and the lamp into her ever-present (though otherwise currently empty) haversack, Rei grinned down at her pet Rabite and scratched his ears. "C'mon, furball. Let's get home. Bud and Lisa will probably have lunch ready by the time we get back. Then we're going to be having a chat about you holding out on me."

Nip let his ears droop, but he willingly followed her out of the cavern towards the surface, looking forward to seeing the sunlight again.

————

Bud and Lisa stared at their mentor in frank amazement, sitting around the smaller table upstairs for dinner since the big table in the dining area was covered in piles of ingredients Rei used in her forging. They hadn't been able to get everything out to the workshops before dark had fallen and the fighter knew that it was all too easy to drop, say, a bottle of Ghost's Howl when it was _trying_ to wriggle out of one's arms. The things were impossible to get back into their jars once they got loose, so she was having her students wait until tomorrow and morning.

But what was making the Elf twins stare was the mischievous smile that Rei was wearing as she used her fork to illustrate a couple of the fights. "So one of the Mushbooms charged in right then and sent Elazul sailing almost the whole way across the cave," she was saying, mimicking the Jumi man's flight with her other hand. "I snuck in about there and took care of it while it was spinning itself 'round like a child's top. Elazul was so worried after that fight that I had to pull off both arm-covers to show him that I hadn't gotten hurt." A throaty laugh that neither twin had heard their master make before. "I swear, that man has to be the biggest worrywart I've ever met! You should have seen the way he was mother-henning that sweet lass of his once we got past the Du'Inke down in the deepest cave. I'm surprised Pearl hasn't whacked him or something by now."

Lil' Cactus was listening intently from his pot; he knew that _he _was the real recipient of this story. The children were a secondary audience.

"He sounds kinda overprotective," Lisa offered shyly, rewarded by a bigger, warmer swirl of laughter from Rei. "I mean, Pearl was okay, right? She made it all the way down there without a scratch."

"Oh, make no mistake, kitten, that one's overprotective as a chocobo hen down to her last chick!" Rei told her, green eyes shining. "But he's also stubborn and as loyal as you'd ever want a friend to be."

"_I _think he sounds like a jerk," Bud grumbled. "He acted like you couldn't take care of yourself."

Rei laughed again, reaching over the table and ruffling the boy's short-cropped, mauve-pink hair. "He's only a jerk sometimes! The rest of the time he's a nice guy who worries too much. I want you to be nice if he ever shows up here, okay?"

"How come?" Bud demanded irritably. "I don't want him anywhere near here! He'd put Trent off growing for a week!"

A finger lightly tapped him on the nose. "Because if he ever shows up here, it'll be by my invitation or because he's desperate enough to ask for help. And if he comes here for help, that'll mean he swallowed a whole lot of pride. So be nice." The last had the air of a command to it.

Bud slouched down into his chair, pulling his head out of Rei's reach, and grumbled something that sounded like resigned capitulation. Rei grinned at him and stood, beginning to collect the empty dinner dishes. "Pearl's very sweet, though. I think you'd like her better than Elazul. I just wish she didn't blush so dratted much. I thought her head was going to explode, she got so red," the fighter chuckled, giving her students an approving smile as they collected the cups and flatware. "I'll wash dishes tonight. Bud, you can dry and Lisa can put them away, all right?"

"'Bout time you did some cleaning around here," Bud grumped. Rei's laughter followed him all the way down to the kitchen.

Lil' Cactus waited until his master's head disappeared through the hole in the floor that the stairs went through before climbing out of his pot and pitter-patting over to one of the heavy support beams, where his leaf-paged diary hung. He scribbled what he thought to be the important parts of the story down, gave it a title, and then scampered back to his pot for his late-evening snooze.

He loved it when Master told him stories.

———

Mark: Owner of the weapons shop in Domina. Has wife, Jennifer, and daughter, Rachel. I can never decide if he's wearing armor, or if he really does have the carapace and antennae of a brown beetle.

Spiny carrots: another kind of produce grown by Trent. They are exactly what they sound like, though they have more impact on personality traits than physical ones.

Bloodsuckers: little bat-like flying creatures that have an irritating habit of pretending to be vampires. Only they actually suck your blood. They get really annoying when they gang up on you.

Gloomoths: moths the size of bats that use the dust of their wings to poison you. Think venomoth from pokemon, only in greens and purples.

Mushbooms: giant mushrooms that spin on their caps. Very useful if you want to up your Charm or skill points. Plus they drop lots of experience crystals.

Iffish: Think lionfish. Now turn it pink and enlarge it by three. Levitates and blows bubbles at you.

Pincer Crab: big, purple crabs whose claws are on springs. Slow buggers.

If you haven't played the game far enough, you have to wonder how Pearl managed to get herself down there in the first place. You get an idea later in the game, but since it involves spoilers, I won't tell you unless you ask me.

Flammy: a creature one step up from a dragon. A very long step, according to the history books in the main character's library. Very beautiful, very elegant, and hasn't been seen in ages. Created by the spirits of the six moons, one for each.

Special thanks go to Raspberryice, my only steady reviewer for this story. (Does two reviews count?)


	4. Flame of Hope

**Ovo:** I hate it when that happens. Since Xan is the alternate main character (and you can access another character at the 'empty house' in the main square after you talk to Revered Nouvelle) it makes sense for him to have the same things that Rei does. Just in a different location.

**RaspberryIce:** _—laughs—_ Such knowledge comes from beating the game at least two or three times on at least three different memory cards. I'm glad you like Rei and that I kept Elazul in character (he keeps wanting to be cheerful, darn it!). But yes; when one is raised by an older sibling, one either loves them dearly or wants nothing to do with them. Sometimes both. Rei happens to fall into the first category. ("Don't doubt the bunny monster" has to be one of my favorite lines that I've written so far. n,.,n)

**Zemratsu: **Yep, I'm playing as I go. Since there's no written script anywhere online that I've found, with the exception of the Jumi arc. Those I don't have to copy, thanks to Etansel. net.

Nothing to say except that I. _Hate. __**MOVING**_. XP

———

Five days later Rei sighed, looking over the piles of herbs arranged on the main table and pulling at her bottom lip in thought. She was getting _awfully_ low on some of them, and was completely out of others, including several key ingredients to her insta-heal potions that she used on injuries picked up in fighting. True, she was strong enough and fast enough to avoid most blows now, and her armor protected her well against what she didn't block, but the stuff was too damn valuable for her not to make it. Nor were her students advanced enough to travel with her without it.

No choice, then.

She went upstairs and grabbed her knives and pack, then headed out the front door. "Bud! Lisa!" she called, stopping on the front steps and peering out into the sunlight. Bud ambled out of the orchard, dusty and smelling of growing things and wearing an expression of pure impatience. Lisa came trotting up the path from the workshops, hair filled with wood shavings. Rei settled the pack on her shoulders, tugging a strap here and there to make the fit more comfortable.

"Yes, Master Rei?" Lisa replied with commendable cheer and far more patience than her brother had at the moment.

"We're getting low on our stock of herbs, so I'm going to make a trip to Gato Grottoes to pick some up. There're supposed to be some excellent healing herbs growing by the waterfall there. Bud, could you put what's on the table back in the workshop cabinets? And Lisa, since he's doing that you can feed the monsters tonight. Don't wait up, all right? It's a two-day round trip to Gato so try and stay out of trouble."

"We're not greenie mages, Master Rei," Bud growled brusquely. "We can take care of everything for two whole measly days. Get going, already."

Rei's smile was brief but real. "All right. Oh, and that load of thatch I ordered from Katie and her husband in town should be arriving today or tomorrow. Don't let them just dump it on you; make sure they stay to help put it on the roof of your bedroom. See if you can drop by Domina tomorrow, all right? Xan's beasties are probably getting lonely."

"Yees, Master Rei," Bud groaned theatrically, making that elusive smile briefly reappear.

"All right, all right, I'll quit nagging. See you in two days." And she jogged off, leaving the Elf twins to stand in the shade of their house-tree.

"And she calls that lapis lazuli guy a worrywart," Bud muttered to his sister, who giggled in agreement.

"No kidding. Want to swap chores? I know a lot of those plants Rei uses make you sneeze."

Bud gave his sister a high-five and headed back into the orchard. "Deal! I hafta see if Nip'll let me get those stickles out of his fur and I promised Tsuta I'd give him an oiling." He vanished into the green shadows on the last word, leaving Lisa to brush the wood shavings out of her hair before heading into the house.

She wore a smile as she neatened up the herbs and sorted them into a basket for carrying. She'd never tell Master if the fighter didn't already know, but Bud had a huge soft spot for the tame monsters he helped take care of. All of her prickly brother's thorns vanished when he was tending them, and the monsters adored him almost as much as they loved Rei herself. The Elf girl wondered how long it would take for Bud to get his very own pet monster once their teacher noticed his 'weakness'.

———

Oddly enough, that very thought had already crossed Rei's mind, and she was muttering ideas on what to help him catch as she walked up the trail that led to the mountain sanctuary of Gato Grottoes, missing the listening presence of Nip. She was contemplating taking him over to Luon to see what they could find, or maybe figuring out where Lake Kilma was and heading over there, when she was brought up short by a Sproutling lying in the middle of the path.

_What in Salamander's flames…?_

A nun was already kneeling by the creature, worry clear in the eyes peeking over her veil. "Excuse me," she asks kindly, "but are you feeling alright?"

The Sproutling whimpered. "My tummy hurts…"

The nun glanced up and spotted Rei coming up the rocky path, relief lighting what parts of her face that could be seen behind the concealing white fabric comprising the masks all the Gato nuns wore. "Oh," she called, "could you help me take care of him?"

Nodding, Rei willingly strode forward as the nun got the Sproutling to its' feet, the little plant-creature squeaking its' thanks and pain. Her hand was already moving for a side-pocket of her pack where she kept her vials of insta-heal potion.

The nun had gotten the Sproutling off the path and was encouraging it by saying, "Come on, try to walk over to that shop over there," with Rei only a few close steps behind, when it bolted up the path.

"Somebody help meeee!" it cried, disappearing from sight.

"We were already trying to help the silly thing," Rei said to the nun, brow furrowed in confusion. The nun nodded in agreement, sharing in Rei's puzzlement and offering the theory that the mountain paths had simply worn the poor creature out.

Still frowning, Rei inclined her head in a polite bow to the nun and walked past her to enter the shop they'd been heading towards. Inside it was quiet, smelling of stone and metal and not of the herbs that Rei was looking for. However, there was a stranger there, apparently looking at the various stones for sale, judging by the way he was holding one up to the light. "Not this one," he muttered, and picked up another stone. "This, too…No sparkle to it."

Pushing a pair of thin-rimmed glasses up on his nose, the young man put the stone back on the counter and turned to her, a helpful smile on his face. For a moment, though, familiarity nagged at Rei, a sense of having met this person somewhere before. "Excuse me," he said, "are you looking for gems?"

Rei shook her head, hair-pipes chiming softly. "No."

The stranger's smile took on overtones of approval, and he dusted his hands off and pushed his glasses up again. "I can see you can tell when a stone is no good," he told the fighter, definitely sounding approving. "My name's Alex, and I own a jewelry shop in Geo. I came here to buy some gems, but good gems are hard to find." His expression shifted into disappointment. "I wish there were better stones."

Noticing that this shop's owner/nun was starting to bristle at the insult to her merchandise, Rei quickly switched the topic by introducing herself and replying with, "Actually, I'm looking for healing herbs. Know where I can find any?"

"One of the other shops is selling some," Alex replied thoughtfully, "and if you're looking to pick your own, there's plenty by the base of the waterfall. Lots of Greenballs there, too."

Thanking him, Rei headed out of the shop. This one focused on weaponry, and she didn't really need to buy any new armor or weapons for herself. Not when what she forged tended to be a cut above what she could purchase. Nibbling on her lip, Rei stood outside the shop for a moment, gazing up the path where the Sproutling had gone. She hated seeing anything peaceful hurting, and Sproutlings were about as peaceful as it got.

Conscience nagging at her as much as that swat of déjà vu in the shop had, Rei climbed up the path on the trail of the injured Sproutling. One of these days, this helping-people thing of hers was really going to get her into trouble, she just knew it.

Rounding a bend in the uphill path, Rei paused at the sight of a crimson-haired man in the flame-licked robes of a monk, standing on the left side of a fork in the trail. They were mostly surrounded by stone—it looked rather like stone fingers had decided to curl here, or a bubble in the stone had splintered enough to show sky and a long, _long_ way down into the forests at the foot of the Gato mountains.

The man glanced over at her with eyes a darker shade of red than his hair, then delved back into his own thoughts, foot tapping uneasily against stone. He stood far too close to the edge of the path and the drop for Rei's comfort, but hey, it was his skin. He probably knew exactly how close he could get, anyway.

What Rei noticed, however, in that glimpse when he'd looked over, was that in his headband he wore a red jewel with a handful of short, reed-slender pipes cutting an uneven fan above his left ear. It endeared him to her for the sake of her own pipes, and at the same time he somehow reminded Rei of Elazul. The Lazuli Knight also sported ornamentation above his left ear in the shape of a brooch, two creamy-colored chrysanthemums, and a spray of light gray feathers.

Sighing in the fashion she'd often heard Xan use when something was bothering him, the man uncrossed his arms and turned to face her, a frown very firmly attached to his face. "I'm Rubens, a fire-keeper for this town," he said as she approached him. "Let me ask you something. I hear a thief is after the temple's flame. Did you see anyone suspicious on your way here?"

Rei thought about it for a moment, then shook her head. "Just a hurt Sproutling that ran through here just a few minutes ago."

"A Sproutling?" Rubens caught his lower lip in his teeth, then shook his head in frustration. "No, he's probably not involved…" Sighing heavily, he ran a hand through his upright, bright red hair. "The inspector exaggerates everything, I swear. What do you want to ask me about? I can see the questions in your eyes."

"Just…did you see which way that Sproutling went?" she asked him, glancing first at the left path, then the right.

He gestured to the right path, puzzlement replacing irritation. "That Sproutling was acting strange…I think he went to the terrace." Nodding her thanks, Rei backtracked the few feet it took for her to travel up the right-hand path, vanishing from the monk's view behind a spire of stone. He gazed after her a moment, then went back to his own thoughts.

———

Rei turned a corner and passed through a doorway carved into the red stone of the mountains, finding not only the Sproutling on the aptly named terrace but a nun as well. And like her sister nun from the shops below, this one was perfectly willing to help the poor Sproutling.

"My tummy hurts!" the little plant-being whimpered, tugging on the nun's sleeve. "Please help me!"

The nun knelt down, the winds carrying her murmur of, "Let me see…" to the watching fighter. Straightening in surprise, the nun's startled exclamation found Rei's ears without the help of the winds. "Oh, it's a Popo Bug! It can cure most anything!"

"Help me!!" begged the Sproutling, not caring _what_ the source of its' pain was, so long as it was gotten rid of.

"Just wait," soothed the nun. "That bug is the ultimate medicine. Let's just remove it."

The Sproutling paused. "You're going to help me?"

Nodding, the nun explained, "I'm going to peel away a leaf to take out the Popo." Rei smacked her forehead; by virtue of Xan's most recent letters, she knew that what the nun just said was the _worst_ thing you could say to a Sproutling. The leaves were very much attached and were as painful to remove as another creature's skin—for the twenty or so seconds it took for another leaf to take the first one's place. Her brother had learned that when he'd had a doppelganger running around Domina, abusing the town's Sproutlings.

And indeed, the Sproutling so threatened let out a terrified shriek and ran off, rushing past Rei as he went and disappearing before Rei could so much as twitch. The nun sighed, rising to her feet and tucking her hands in her sleeves. "Oh, what a waste!" she said mournfully. "Popo Bugs are so expensive…I think Mr. Rubens needed that medicine, too."

Pushing her wind-blown hair out her face, Rei turned around and once again followed in the tracks of the Sproutling.

She trekked down to Rubens, stirring him out of his pensive thoughts, and out of curiosity, asked him about himself. He replied that it was his job to keep the torches burning at the temple on the left-hand path. Remembering their earlier conversation, Rei also asked him about the inspector he'd mentioned.

"He's a mouse-man with a pipe and a really loud voice," grumbled the monk, "He keeps pestering me to be careful all the time." Then he jerked a thumb up the left-hand trail before Rei could open her mouth again and told her that the Sproutling had run that way a moment ago.

Sheepish, Rei thanked him and trotted up the way she'd been directed. Rubens watched her go, then turned when a sharp, quiet noise sounded at his feet. Startled, he looked down to find a folded piece of paper sealed with a blob of red wax. "What's that?" he wondered aloud, bending down to pick it up.

———

Rei trotted in the temple, breathless from all the ups and downs she'd been jogging today, and was suddenly breathless for another reason entirely. Rainbow-colored sunlight streamed down from a stained-glass window near the roof of the temple, and massive statues guarded either side of a simple—but elegant—carved altar. The walls were covered in one design or another, forming a wonderful harmony with themselves.

It took Rei several moments before she noticed the Sproutling she'd been chasing, running circles around a nun praying at a stone banister in the middle of the room. "Stop it," the nun commanded.

The Sproutling ran another lap. "My tummy hurts! Please do something about the Popo Bug!"

"Calm you soul, and all worldly pains will vanish," intoned the praying nun.

"But it hurts!"

"You must meditate," the nun said. "Everything is in your mind."

"Somebody help me!" wailed the Sproutling, and ran out again. Rei growled under her breath, muttering uncomplimentary things about brainless plant-things that weren't capable of sitting still for five Flammies-blast-it seconds. Still muttering, she pivoted on her heel and stalked after her quarry.

She went back to the terrace, having noticed that the Sproutling was avoiding the shops on the lower slopes, and frowned in puzzlement when she noticed that Rubens wasn't at his post. Stepping through the stone doorway, she found him, another nun, and the Sproutling. The trio were clustered at the far end of the stone platform, where the waterfall could be seen unobstructed.

Rei shivered, a chill of foreboding biting into her spine.

"Help me," begged the Sproutling, "but don't tear off my leaves!"

"All right, my dear," soothed the nun, "Come over here, I will help you." Willingly the little creature toddled forward, and the nun looked over at the monk at her side. "Here, Mr. Rubens."

Looking even grimmer than he had before, Rubens murmurs, "Yes…" and there came a sound that Rei had heard only a handful of times before: two crystals tapping together to produce a ripple of light. Rei swallowed an exclamation of shock—Rubens was a _Jumi_!

The Sproutling collapsed in a pile of leaves, levered itself up enough to yell, "OW!" and then collapsed again.

"Go ahead, Mr. Rubens," the nun urged, only to have the Jumi man take an uncertain step back.

"No, wait." He shook his head as though to clear his thoughts.

"Well? Don't you want to revive your petrified sweetheart?" the nun demanded, and Rubens began to admit that he did, only to have the Sproutling leap to its feet.

"Ooooooh, you meanie!" it shouted, and ran off, once again rushing by Rei before she had a chance to pounce on it. She was really getting annoyed about that: Xan would laugh himself sick if he knew that a wee beastie like that kept outmaneuvering his sister.

"See? Now he got away!" scolded the nun.

Rubens crossed his arms, visibly huddling in on himself before replying, "I don't want to hurt anyone." Rei had to strain her ears to catch all of it. Fortunately the winds were cooperating as usual.

"Then you can't protect anyone. You're too soft," the nun told him, walking the few feet it took to pass Rei standing halfway across the terrace, and Rei got another chill at the tone of the nun's voice. The timbre reminded her of someone else, someone that had given her this same uneasy feeling, and recently.

Rubens didn't answer, instead turning to look over the valley at the cascade spilling down the far side. The nun gestured at it all, her motion including the shops at the temple barely visible from where they stood. "Life is like this town…Cutting through rocks to make pathways. We can't get to the top without a flame of hope in out hearts." She glanced sideways at the man trying his hardest to ignore her. "Don't you think so?" Again, he didn't answer. The nun added, in the tones of someone digging a knife in deeper, "Only those strong enough survive. It's nature's way."

Rei let out a faint growl; although the wind was blowing towards her, Rubens apparently heard it, for he turned towards her in mild surprise. He found the strange, blond young woman all abristle from her new place between monk and nun, and despite himself he made an amused sound.

The fighter let her hackles flatten out again, looking at Rubens watchfully. He gave her a small, reassuring nod, which she returned before going back the way she'd come. She was growing on him, he had to admit. She had more fire in her heart than all of the temple's torches combined and seemed intent on spreading that vivacity to everyone and everything around her by simply being there.

Rei sneezed as she jogged up the path to the temple and growled her opinion of cold mountain winds. It was with some relief that she went through the large, open doors—only to stop and stare at the nun sprawled on the floor in front of the banister. Instinct took over, sending her in a leap to the woman's side, but she'd barely touched the fallen nun when a mouse-man in a green, patched coat rushed in.

"Aha!" he shouted, making Rei wince as his voice echoed through the room. "A crime!!" He rushed over, and Rei suddenly remembered the description of the inspector that Rubens had given her only a few minutes ago. _"He's a mouse-man with a pipe and a really loud voice…"_ Rubbing her abused ears, she decided that this must be him.

Meanwhile, the inspector had knelt down and was speaking into a recording-stone. "The victim is…a…nun. She has no external wounds…" When Rei moved to help the woman sit up, he snapped, "Hey, you! Don't touch the body!"

Affronted, Rei scowled at him as she fished in her pack for a vial of insta-heal while the nun groaned, "I…I am still alive…" It made her feel better when the mouse jumped about two feet into the air in surprise.

"Oh, my apologies!" he hastened to say. "What seems to be the problem?"

"I twisted my ankle when the Sproutling bumped into me," the woman replied with as much dignity as she could manage while lying on the floor. Rei had the interesting experience of seeing someone literally steam from the ears, as the inspector jumped up and down angrily.

"So she disguised herself as a Sproutling? What could she want?!" Steam shot out of his ears again as he jumped up and down some more. "Blast it, Sandra!" And he ran out again. Rei offered her potion to the nun, but was refused politely. Her companion would only need a little support wrap, and then she would go back to praying.

Wavering uncertainly, the fighter was given a firm push towards the door and was told to go find the Sproutling before he pushed someone off a cliff by accident. Bowing to the nun, Rei ran off, now very worried.

She raced along the path back to the terrace, figuring that the beastie would be there—or if not, then Rubens would be able to help her find the silly thing. She was half-right; Rubens was there, still with that nun that had made Rei so uneasy before. They were near a stone outcropping carved into a rough table and seats, and Rei got a very bad feeling when she saw them.

"What is it?" Rubens asked the nun impatiently.

"I think I will get that Popo Bug from that Sproutling," she replied in that dangerous purr that made Rei's nerves scream warning.

"Well, go ahead. I'm not going to do it."

The nun pressed a hand over her heart in mock dismay. "How callous! So you don't care one way or another about your love in Geo?"

Rubens took an uneasy step backwards, hand going for a weapon that was absent from his belt. "How is it you know where she is?"

Veiled or not, no doubt the nun was smirking. "Good question."

Rubens took a step forward again, face flushed in anger. "Don't mock me."

Seemingly unconcerned, the nun asked, "Well, if you don't want it, can I take the Popo Bug?"

"Fine by me," gritted the monk.

"You don't care whether it affects your girlfriend or the Sproutling, do you?"

By this point Rei was mentally telling her body to move, to get Rubens the hell out of here, but for some reason her legs wouldn't obey, and she was trapped watching the scene play out. Rubens crossed his arms again, hunching his shoulders as he replied, "Look, I don't want to interfere in anyone's life. And I don't want anyone interfering in mine. Just leave me alone."

A throaty chuckle rose from beneath the veil. "Never." And Rei heard the soft chime of a Jumi's core a split second before Rubens' core sang out in reply. The red-head stared in shock at the woman even as she cried, "Stones who lose their sparkle shall be punished!" and slashed across his chest.

The Jumi man fell, ruby core bared to the sunlight and pulsing crazily from amidst already-bruising skin. Letting out a grunt of pain, Rubens glared up at his attacker. "How…dare you…"

Whatever spell had held Rei in place disappeared. She raced forward a few steps, but screeched to a halt when the woman knelt down with her hand hovering over Rubens' core. "Come any closer," the fake nun warned, "and I'll kill him." To Rubens she added, "Do as I say, and I won't harm your core."

"What…do you…want…?" Rubens wheezed.

"I wanna see some tears! Cry like a child and beg for your life," his antagonist demanded. She waited for a few moments, then cocked her head to one side. "Well? Where are your tears?"

"But…I can't…"

_Jumi lost the ability to cry long ago, _a history book recited in Rei's mind. _Legends speak of the Jumi tears, famed for their curative powers, but those tears were lost during the war for the mana stones. Not long after, they lost their mortal tears as well._

"That's just too bad," clucked the jewel thief mockingly. "Goodbye, Ruby Knight." Rei watched in horror as the woman reached down and ripped out Rubens' core. Standing, the disguised thief shook her head in amazement. "Still alive, eh? Jumi of the Lucidia are indeed formidable." Holding up his core, she added, "As I warned you, I'm taking the 'Flame of Hope'!"

Anger making the edges of her vision fuzzy, Rei advanced on the woman with her knives out and eager to bite. The woman took a step back, shaking her head in disapproval. "I won't be caught so easily," she told the fighter. "See you around." Rei's skin tingled with the activation of a portal spell, her quarry vanishing before her eyes.

Target lost for the moment, her attention turned to the man lying on the ground and a wave of fresh horror spilled through her. She took two steps and Inspector Boyd rushed through the doorway, huffing and puffing around the pipe clenched in his teeth. "Oh, no!!" the mouse-man shouted, doing his steam-at-the-ears-and-jump bit again. "I was too late!" Repeat performance. "Blast it!"

Rei ignored him, putting her knives away at the faint wheezing of Rubens' breath to kneel down by his side, hands fumbling for the vial of potion that she'd tucked away in her dress pocket. Inspector Boyd stamped over, shouting, "So it was you!! Give yourself up, Sandra, and take those crazy sticks out of your hair!"

Rei again ignored him in favor of finding that blasted vial. She pulled it out with a small noise of relief, only to have a broad hand cover her own and the vial shaking in her fingers. "No," gasped Rubens, giving Rei a weak smile, "it was…a…nun…" He shook his head weakly when Rei tried to open her vial of insta-heal. That was when she remembered that conventional medicine didn't work on Jumi—it was their tears or their own reserves and that was it.

Boyd jumped around for a moment, swearing loudly at Sandra's trickery. Rubens groaned, then went limp, eyes gazing blindly at the sky past Rei's head. "Diana…" he whispered hoarsely, "I-I wish I could see you again…" Blinking, he focused on Rei again. "I'm…sorry…" Incandescing, he was gone.

A few minutes later, a stone-faced Rei and a grim Inspector Boyd were in the prayer room of the temple, the knife-fighter leaning against the banister in front of the altar, indifferent to any blasphemies she might be committing by doing so. Her companion paced back and forth, puffing mightily on his pipe as he explained things to her.

"The temple received a note from Sandra, the jewel hunter. It said that she would steal the Flame of Hope. I thought she meant the sacred torches," he gestured to the aforementioned torches burning solemnly in their sockets, "but she was after Mr. Rubens' core! If only I had known that Mr. Rubens was a Jumi!" Turning to face the silent woman, he said, "We _must_ catch Sandra, no matter what!! I need your help! Will you cooperate?"

Levering herself off the banister, Rei nodded once. "My services are yours."

Boyd looked close to tears as he shouted, "OH, THANK YOU!" He headed for the door, calling over his shoulder, "Something tells me that Sandra is still around in this area. I will search the village, and you go check the outskirts."

Rei beat him out the door and went down the trail at a run, heedless of the drop she faced if she slipped. She was through the village and running up the path that led to the waterfall before she'd taken eight breaths, heart a wardrum in her ears. Bypassing the priestess standing watch over the wilder mountain trails, something penetrated her hunting fury _(Rage or cry, and to cry is to leave her victims weeping in Underworld)_. Fresh green leaves lay scattered in a haphazard line along a particular trail, their ends still oozing clear sap. Rei bared her teeth in a fierce smile; if Sandra wanted that damned Popo Bug, she'd better get it before Rei catches up with her and the shedding Sproutling.

Focusing on that betraying guide of leaves, Rei took off at her top speed, knives out and ready at her sides. Her warcry rang off the stones for seeming ages after she vanished from the priestess' sight. "'Ware, all monsters! Here comes trouble!"

———

Less out of breath than she'd expected, scratched, hot, and still furious, Rei raced along the rise that led to the Cancun bird's nest above the falls and skidded to a stop at the sight of Sandra, still in her nun disguise, standing with that damned Sproutling.

"I can get rid of the pain you feel," she crooned to the Sproutling, who brightened.

"Reeeally?" The chime of a core, and the Sproutling fell over with a cry of pain. Rei stalked forward with battle-fire in her eyes, to be greeted by an amused chuckle. She knew that voice now—it belonged to the woman from Mekiv Caverns, the one that got Elazul so riled.

"Oh, more company?" Sandra purred, then to Rei's surprise Inspector Boyd came huffing up from behind her, pipe still firmly clamped between his teeth.

"Now I have you, Sandra!" he shouted over the roar of the fall, stopping just ahead of Rei. "You're going to pay for what you've done!"

In a flash, the nun costume was gone, proving Rei's belief to be true when the red-haired, green-gowned woman from Mekiv was revealed from beneath the baggy clothes. "No one will ever catch me!" she retorted wickedly, wriggling her fingers before flinging a rope straight up. The rushing of wingbeats filled the air as Sandra's rope was caught and pulled, the jewel thief going along with it, shouting, "Ta-ta!"

"Blast it, the Cancun Bird!" Inspector Boyd swore, leaping forward with surprising nimbleness for his rotund shape. The Sproutling jumped to its feet at the same moment, colliding with the Inspector with twin yelps of pain.

Rei stared in growing sorrow and pain after the Cancun Bird and her fleeing quarry as the plant-being squeaked in surprise, "Oh, wow! My tummy doesn't hurt anymore! Yaaay!" It bounced a few times, squealing, "I'm okay now!"

Inspector Boyd cuffed it in a show of temper. "Oh, shut up. This is no time to celebrate!"

"Oh."

"Another Jumi murdered," the mouse-man sighed in despair, shaking his head. "This is horrible." Turning to Rei, he told her, "Well, I appreciate your help, anyway. Please take this." Rei gazed numbly at the carved stone tablet in her hands, an unlit torch made of a coral branch stacked on top, while Boyd turned back to shake a fist at the sky. "Sandra…I WILL catch you one of these days!!"

He nearly fell off the thin ledge when Rei let out a howl that dwarfed his shout, before the fighter whirled on her heel and stalked down the mountain.

———

Mid-afternoon the next day, Bud and Lisa heard Nip and Tsuta set up a clamor from their corral and rushed out of the house, still smelling of the new thatch glowing gold amidst the shadows of the leaves. They stopped on the porch, staring at their master letting herself in through the low front gate instead of leaping it like always.

She was covered in road-dust and her head hung low enough that her eyes were hidden behind her bangs. Bud was the first to ease forward, offering a tentative, "Master Rei? Are you alright?"

Without a word she shucked off her pack and handed it to him; it was filled with sharp-scented herbs, a canvas bag hanging off the side. Bud set the pack down and opened the bag a crack, then shut it just as quickly before a single dried Greenball bug could fall out. He looked up and found his teacher's green eyes dark with pain before she could avoid his gaze.

Still without speaking, she walked slowly around the house to the monster corral, Bud and Lisa following, pack momentarily forgotten on the wide, shallow dirt steps that made up the front walk. Nip and Tsuta clustered around her the moment she set foot in the grass-filled enclosure, chirring and hissing their concern even as she beelined for the small barn.

Woman and beasts disappeared inside, the doors shutting firmly behind them. Bud and Lisa watched and listened for a few minutes, but all they heard through the wood were the comforting sounds that Nip and Tsuta were making and the faintest rustle of hay.

The twins crept away back into the house, retreating to their newly-thatched room to sit on the bench lying under their own window. "What do you think happened?" Lisa asked her brother worriedly, to be answered with a worried head-shake.

"I dunno. But I hope I never see her like that again," he said fervently. His teacher had walked like one quietly bleeding to death, even though all she'd had were a few cuts and scrapes from fighting monsters. "I hope it's got nothing to do with that guy she met—whatshisname—Elazul. Or Pearl. I don't want her to turn to stone."

Lisa nodded her own heartfelt agreement, the two young Elves sitting there for a few moments longer before Lisa climbed off the bench and headed downstairs. "Come on," she told her brother quietly. "We'd better get those herbs hung to dry before they rot and the Greenballs in their jars."

Bud, still wearing an anxious expression, hopped off the bench and followed after her.

———

The next morning the two emerged from their room and tumbled downstairs to find their master clean and sitting at the table, breakfast already laid out and steaming. The twins glanced at each other and silently padded back upstairs to get dressed, wondering quietly between themselves about when Rei had come out of the monster barn.

When they came back down, Rei was sipping calmly at a cup of her favorite tea, her own breakfast untouched in front of her. She'd made pancakes for her students, but she herself could never eat hot things when the weather was already hot—and the air past the twins' window was already starting to warm—so her breakfast was fruit salad.

"Master Rei?" Lisa asked, hesitant.

"Good morning, you two," she replied, sounding as calm as she looked. "I see the thatch got delivered yesterday."

"Yeah." Bud plunked himself into his chair and claimed the syrup pot for himself, pouring a generous helping of it onto his pancakes. "And they tried dumping it off on us like you warned us. It took Tsuta to change their minds about that." Eyeing his master's bowl, he stretched and drizzled some on the fruit waiting there. "She needs sugar!" he protested when his sister gasped and Rei's eyebrow rose. "Look at her! She's supposed to be chasing us around the house already! And you're too thin," he scolded his teacher, pointing his fork at her. "Eat, already!"

"Yes, mama," Rei said meekly, a tiny smile lurking at the corners of her mouth. Satisfied, Bud sat himself back down and passed Lisa the syrup. Rei was slower about it than her students, but she did start eating, a faraway expression turning her eyes a paler green.

On his second helping, Bud looked up when the fighter cleared her throat softly. "Someone stole the 'Flame of Hope'," she said quietly, and went back to eating. None of the uncertain—or Bud's not-so-uncertain—questions were met with answers, so the twins sighed and switched the topic to how Xan's monsters had been when they went to visit them the day Rei had left.

Upstairs, Lil' Cactus finished scribbling about Popo bugs in his diary.

———

Potions: If you've ever played the game (I think most, if not all, of my reviewers have, so far) you'll notice that no matter how hurt you are at the end of a battle, when it's over you're automatically back up to full hit points. There had to be _some_ explanation for it, right?

(Sidenote: It took Rei awhile to come up with the potion; that's why she has all the scars she does. And some injuries scar anyway. She's working on that.)

Greenballs: a kind of wingless locust, very valuable in Fa'Diel for medicine.


	5. Faeries' Light

Nothing to say...

hUes: I have to admit her speech patterns are modeled after mine, and there's no way a little bit of Scot wouldn't creep in after years of the Renaissance Faire. And I love the Hero, he's spiffy, and you can play with the HeroxPearl pairing. n,.,n I'm such a fangirl.

RaspberryIce: It always drives me nuts, too. Anyone who's played the game at least once can testify that it sucks when you know what's going to happen and you can't do squat. I played through the event again with Elazul (and boy, was _that _a trick) and saw what you meant. I'm going to stick to the plain, non-Knight-accompanied script, though, since it's easier. (I remember, though, that if you play Drowned Dreams with him, Basket Fish mentions that Sappho, the original 'owner' of the Blue Eye, was the one who gave the stone to him.)

Shadow's Rage: Aww, thanks. I love getting reviews like these. n,.,n

———

It had been a few days since Rei had come home grim and silent, and nothing the twins had tried could get her to smile. That little twitch from the morning after she'd come back had been the closest they'd gotten. It was driving Bud and Lisa crazy, and Nip refused to stop following her around, _chirring_ at her every so often.

Every time he did, she'd stop whatever she was doing and run her fingers through his thick fur, but sorrow and something darker stayed in her eyes. The twins were in the orchard, conspiring with Trent to see if they could come up with something while they harvested the grandfatherly tree's latest crop, when Rei turned the tables on them.

She came into the orchard with her travel pack slung over one shoulder, Nip missing from his usual place in her shadow, and raised an eyebrow when the three already there fell silent. "A lamp someone gave me has disappeared," she told her students in a mild, level tone that told Bud and Lisa Rei knew they were plotting. "I'm going to head to the next town over to a shop I've heard of there. I may be gone for several days."

Her pupils knew her well enough by now that they understood that as, _I'm going to find somewhere to be alone for a while. But thanks for trying._ They nodded over their armloads of fruits and vegetables. Then Lisa tilted her head as a mental map told her what the 'next town over' was. "You're going to Lumina? In the Twilight lands? But that's at least a two day trip."

"That's right, Lisa. There's apparently a very nice little lamp shop there that has a loyal following. MeiMei told me about it."

"We'll take care of things here," Bud assured her, rewarded at last by the faintest ghost of a smile.

"I know you two will. If something happens that you really need me for, go find Pelican in Domina and have her come get me."

"You bet, Master Rei," Lisa chirped, startled when Rei reached over and captured a rocket papaya from atop her pile. The knife-fighter uncurled the first two fingers from around her prize to give them a small wave, then turned and walked out of the orchard.

"I'll be glad when she finds her smiles again," Trent rustles, the wind creaking in his highest branches. "This place just doesn't feel the same without them." Bud and Lisa nodded in agreement, returning to their interrupted chore.

———

Rei walked the road to Domina, slowly nibbling at her snack and letting its magical properties dull the sadness she'd been feeling since Rubens' death. She'd been kicking herself over it since Sandra got away, running the scene over and over again in her mind. If she'd only just noticed that trap-spell sooner, then Rubens might still be alive.

_'Ifs' seldom are,_ Xan's voice chided gently in her mind. _And they only drive you crazy._

Boy, wasn't _that _the Goddess' own truth.

When a door suddenly blocked her path, she stopped, blinked, and nearly smacked herself in the head for incurable habits at the sight of Domina's pub door inches away from her nose. She glanced behind her and sighed. Yep. There was the turn-off into town, and here she was. Oh, well. She might as well get something sweet to take with her. It would probably improve her mood for however long it lasted.

She felt herself almost smile at the familiar, cheerful jangle of the bell over the door as she went in—and halted in her tracks for the second time in as many minutes. Elazul leaned against the wall next to the far window, his hood pulled low beneath the band that held his ornamental brooch. Startled green eyes met blue, and the Jumi Knight actually grinned at the sight of her.

"Hey," he greeted. "I'm looking for a friend."

"Pearl's missing again?" came automatically popping out of Rei's mouth. This time she did smack herself in the forehead for letting her tongue go waltzing off without consulting her brain first. Elazul seconded the smack, a light bop to the top of her head after walking over.

"You really do have a 'helping people' thing, don't you?" he asked in good humor. "I've been talking to people around here and that's what they keep telling me." His smile only got bigger when she turned a light shade of pink and mumbled something that was probably supposed to be defensive, hiding behind her fluffy bangs.

Inwardly, though, he sighed. He'd been hearing a lot more than just how Rei was always ready to help anyone out of a pinch. That mail-carrier had told the wife of the weapons-seller that the knife-fighter had seemed very depressed over something, and it seems the bird had been right. She didn't even have that Rabite with her, for Mana's sake.

So instead of resurrecting that aloof mask that never seemed to work around Rei anyhow, Elazul just ruffled those curtaining bangs and told her, "Pearl's helping out Jennifer with some sort of inventory and or cleaning spree. I was actually looking for _you_."

"Me? Why?"

"I'm not a shopkeeper," Elazul told her, prepared to lie through his teeth if he had to. "I have no head for those sorts of numbers. I thought spending time with you would be more interesting."

The look she gave him was uncertain, but not particularly disbelieving. She studied him for a moment, then shook her head unhappily. "Thanks for the offer, Elazul. Really. I do appreciate it. It's just…something happened lately, and I'd rather travel alone for a little while."

She was almost out the door when his voice reached her, cutting through the silence of a pub that was always this empty at this time of day. "Brooding over whatever it is isn't going to help, Rei. If nothing else, I can probably understand what it is you're going through."

Rei stopped, one hand on the doorjamb, and let that sink in. Elazul was a Jumi, which meant that he'd probably been alive since the last war over a century ago—even if that _did _mean that in Jumi terms, he was her own age. He'd probably seen his own people die in front of him. Maybe…just maybe…

"Okay." Elazul hesitated for a moment, not sure if the quiet assent hadn't been his ears playing tricks on him, then came over to her and placed his hand on her shoulder.

"You don't have to tell me about it," he said softly. "But if you want to, I'll listen."

Rei sure as Mana wouldn't tell him that she'd seen one of his people die in front of her; but the rest… "I'll tell you later," she promised. "On the way to Lumina."

———

Late that night, Elazul sat by the embers of their small fire and stared upwards at the stars. Rei slept in her bedroll across the fire-pit from him, having chosen first watch against any monsters who might come sneaking around. She'd spent the afternoon alternately telling him about the Sproutling and the man she'd failed to save and raging at the murderer who'd gotten away. Elazul's undivided attention and his responses seemed to have helped, though a few unfortunate trees bore fist-sized dents in them from the worst of the rages.

He knew she'd spent her turn on watch in training, even if she'd shown no sign of it when she'd woken him for his turn. The ground around their campsite was crossed and crisscrossed with scuffed footprints, testament to a workout that somehow hadn't disturbed him at all, light sleeper though he was.

Elazul stifled a sigh and worked to untangle his thoughts. The few monsters they'd encountered today had cinched something for him, at least: Rei wasn't a human, she was a sprite. A very rare kind.

It was her speed and agility that had proved it to him—no human he'd ever met had ever moved like her. He hadn't realized it at first because all the other sprites he'd ever met had had some kind of unique physical characteristic, like butterfly wings or hair that was either fruit or did an excellent impression of it. Rei was the very first that he could say looked…ordinary. If such a word could even be applied to her.

And Elazul was stuck, because of who and what she was.

Rei helped people. Period. End of story. Didn't matter who, didn't matter how or why or if they even needed help in the first place, she would jump right in and do her best to make the trouble go away. Every person willing to talk to him in Domina (and that was a fair handful, after he'd apologized to Rachel for scaring her) had told him so, repeatedly. The priest at the Mana Church at the north-eastern end of town had told him so, even, and had added with a pained sigh that such was a trait shared by Rei's elusive brother as well. _"It runs in the family, you see,"_ the bird-like sprite had said mournfully. _"I rather suspect that trait is why their parents failed to come home one night."_

Rei was able to hide her emotions about as well as a Rabite could hide Wisdom Gaeus, the living hill. It was _possible_, but required more effort than was cared for. She loved and lived like she fought; fiercely and all over the place. She'd somehow already fixed Elazul into her life as someone she could trust, as apparent by her actions today, and as someone she could and did call 'friend'.

Chivalrous idiot that he was, he could no more betray that easy trust than he could raise a hand to Pearl.

Nibbling on the edge of his thumbnail, Elazul thought to himself, _If I leave now, break things off before she gets too deeply involved, then I might cause exactly what I'm trying to avoid._

Which was Rei's death. He didn't want her to die, and not the least because she was a member of a race as rare as his own in this day and age. She was his _friend_, the first one he'd had outside of Pearl since his people had abandoned Etansel after the last war over the Mana Stones.

She was strong, and willful, and caring. Even in the deepest of her rages today, she'd only fought monsters that had attacked them, and smacked trees that would heal over time.

But the Knight of Lapis Lazuli couldn't afford friends when there was a hunter after the cores of his people. If his core was taken, it would leave any friends he'd made at risk of turning to stone. The side of him that wanted to protect couldn't abide that.

Studying what was visible of his companion above her blanket—her eyes, a curl of fingers limp in sleep, and the spill of dusty-gold hair—Elazul found a distant corner of himself vaguely comparing frost and the color of that spill in the moonlight, and shook his head until his vision spun.

_You're an idiot, Elazul,_ he scolded himself, thumping his forehead with the heel of his palm. _First pretty girl that isn't your Guardian and can hold her own in a fight and all your common sense goes straight into the fire. _Think,_ fool!_

Okay. Leaving was out because like it or not he was her friend, and it would break Rei's heart if he just up and bailed on her. Getting too close was out as well, because of that thrice-damned hunter.

He thumped his forehead again. _We're so screwed. Elazul, you _idiot!

———

Rei glanced sidelong at Elazul as they walked into the town of Lumina a day later, the skies above permanently twilight for several miles around for some reason or another. She couldn't remember why, but it had to do with some kind of magic.

Her companion looked tired, and vaguely disturbed about something. "Elazul, are you all right?"

"Huh?" Blue eyes blinked themselves out of a distant stare, flickering down to her. "Sorry. What?"

"I asked, 'are you all right?'," Rei repeated patiently, steering them to the right, where a thin footbridge connected the market section of town to the tiny square one used to enter Lumina in the first place. So far MeiMei's directions were holding true, though Rei hadn't realized how much effort it would take to keep from constantly looking up at the star-filled sky. Twilight at ten in the morning was _weird_. "You're acting sort of out of it."

Elazul favored her with a weak smile. "I'm fine. Just slept badly, is all." He noted grumpily that _she _seemed more her normal self. Gnome take her, but the woman was practically _humming_ as she led them down a cobblestone street and up a flight of stairs.

Then he realized, no, that wasn't her, but a centaur wearing a green jacket and floppy green hat, playing a lute up on a public balcony. Rei was wincing, fingers plugged firmly in her ears as she beelined for a plain door nearby that had a small wooden sign hanging above it. Elazul could barely make out the name, 'Limelight', in the half-darkness that filled the town.

"Oh, Monique!" sang the centaur, badly off-key, "Your eyes sparkle like the stars above! You slide away from my arms—"

Elazul sighed in relief at the song's abrupt silence when the shop door closed securely behind them. Beside him, Rei made a pleased noise at the sight of a dozen shelves filled with small lamps, each one's thumbnail-sized enchanted crystal glowing warmly.

Behind a horseshoe-shaped counter stood a young woman in her early twenties with large eyes and an expressive mouth. She was dressed in a soft, rose-pink bodice with matching, detached sleeves that hugged her arms snugly. Her straight, coppery hair was crowned by an odd sort of hat whose brim stuck straight up behind her bangs, a band of white flowers twined in her hair at the base of said hat and trailing down by her ears.

At least, Elazul _thought _she had ears underneath that thick hair.

The shopkeeper smiled brightly at them, but though it didn't seem quite as sincere as it could have, she greeted them cheerfully enough. "Hi! I'm Monique, the lamp maker!"

Rei answered the smile with one of her own, approaching the counter with a hint of her old bounce. "You have such a wonderful store!"

"I'm glad someone thinks so," Monique replied, smile vanishing into a woebegone expression. "My lamps aren't selling too well…I only need to sell six more." She looked around at all the lamps and thought aloud, "Maybe I should close this shop and go to another town?"

Elazul yelped and lurched into Rei when the door banged into him, sending them to the left of the counter as the centaur from before rushed into the shop, crying, "Oh no, my love! Don't say such a crazy thing!" He dashed up to the counter and grabbed startled Monique's hands, lifting them and asking, "Are you saying that you're leaving your poet of love, Gilbert? I can't live without looking up at the starry sky with you by my side!"

_'Poet of love?'_ Rei mouthed to Elazul with an incredulous lift of an eyebrow, who rolled his eyes and shrugged back.

In the meantime, Monique had freed her hands and was trying reason. "But I will starve to death if I don't sell my lamps!"

Gilbert thought about that for a moment, then brightened, striking a pose that was probably supposed to look dramatic, but only looked silly considering his surroundings. "Okay, listen to my idea, my love! _I'll_ sell all six lamps for you!"

The young woman blinked, then smiled, a real, delighted smile. "Well! That's very nice of you!" She reached down behind the counter, and her two curious guests watched as a very long feather topped with a larger version of the hair-flowers curved into sight for a moment. It vanished below the edge of the counter when Monique straightened, placing a wide, shallow basket in front of her. Inside were the six lamps, nestled in a protective layer of hay to keep them from breaking.

Gilbert placed his hand over his heart and proclaimed, "Wait for me right here, my darling! Here begins out beautiful love story!" Then he gently picked up the basket and raced out the door.

Rei and Elazul untangled themselves from each other, the Jumi youth dusting himself off as Rei cast a dubious look at the door swinging shut. "What interesting people I meet these days," she said dryly, grinning at Elazul. He pretended not to hear her and brushed his fingertips across his core to reassure himself that it hadn't been damaged.

"Gilbert is such a nice person," Monique defended, then added sheepishly, "He's a little weird, though."

"That's a nice way of putting it," Elazul told her, voice light.

"C'mon, 'Lazul," Rei urged, sounding as though she were swallowing laughter, "I want to get a better look at those lamps." He put up no resistance as she nudged him back out the door.

Outside, Gilbert immediately accosted them, though he kept his voice low enough not to be heard by Monique in the shop. "Oh, you, the traveler there!" He gestured them over, and smiled winningly at them when they came up. "Take these! You can't leave Monique in distress like that, can you?"

"No," murmured Elazul, "she can't." He winced when a leather-clad foot came down on his toes while Rei continued to listen to Gilbert.

"Let's go sell these six lamps for her!" the centaur was cajoling, tilting the basket down to show off its contents. "I'll buy my share of lamps, but you should go sell them." _Since it doesn't look like you have a lot of ready cash, _Gilbert thought to himself rather irritably, missing Rei's Vizel-gold armbands, then hastened to add, "Each one costs 1,000 Lucre. Of course, you _can_ buy them yourself."

"Where's the fun in that?" Rei asked impishly, selecting three of the six lamps. Elazul groaned and muttered something that she could pretend not to hear, though she noticed her friend had moved his toes. "I'd rather find out how good I am at selling things besides weapons."

Gilbert beamed at her. "What a good sport! Willing to help out with my love!"

"Right," Rei agreed, handing one of the lamps to Elazul to hold. "I'm doing this for Monique. You're too silly to take seriously." And with that, she trotted off down the street with Elazul right behind her, leaving Gilbert to splutter indignantly at the top of the steps.

"Are you really going to try and sell these?" Elazul asked as they crossed back over the little footbridge and over the one leading to what turned out to be an open-air tavern and the residential district. Rei looked up at the sign hung amidst strings of glowing lights and poked Elazul to do the same with a chuckle.

_'Mischievous Spirits'_ read the carved sign in curlicue letters, and Elazul found himself chuckling. "That's a promising sign," Rei chirped, and ducked the light-hearted swat from her companion's free hand.

"Mana Goddess forfend you start punning at me!"

"Aw, you're no fun, 'Lazul," pouted the knife-fighter, turning around to survey the tavern and missing the startled look on the Knight's face. "Of _course_ I'm going to sell them! I just have to find some customers…" Her eyes fell on two Dudbears meandering around, one upstairs by the bar, the other with them on the ground floor, and emeralds lit up. "…And learn how to talk to them!"

Elazul followed at a thoughtful pace while Rei scampered up the steps leading to the sheltered balcony that held both the bar and a handful of rooms that could be rented. He'd never had that pout trained on him from anyone but Pearl, and after a few years of traveling with his Guardian, he was pretty used to it.

But with that flame of mischief dancing in her eyes over that playful little lip quiver…Rei had nearly made his heart stop.

He thumped himself in the forehead when Rei had her attention focused on the barkeep, berating himself silently about letting a mere pout do that to him. He was a Knight, Flammies take it! He could damn well _act_ like one! "Stupid hormones…" he muttered under his breath, then froze.

He started breathing again when he found Rei deep in discussion with the barkeep, and blinked. He hadn't noticed when they'd come up, but the man's body looked to be made out of a handful of large puzzle pieces, instantly putting him at the top of Elazul's 'Strangest People I've Ever Met' list.

" 'Baba' is music," the barkeep was telling an intent Rei when Elazul tuned back into the conversation, adding with a laugh, "They sure do love their music. Now, 'dada' is please, and 'gak' is used to show dislike. Use 'bub' if you don't understand something. Duba dub?"

"Dub!" Rei chirped, and the barkeep laughed again.

"That sounds pretty good!" he told her, and resumed his place behind the bar. Wearing the biggest grin he'd ever seen anyone wear, Rei immediately trotted over to the Dudbear wandering by the stairs and knelt down to be on his level.

"Duda Bubu, duba Bubu?" asked the Dudbear. It, like all its' kind, resembled a child's toy, almost as patchwork as a Boink, but in tans and golden browns. It wore the standard patched lime green vest, slippers, and a cap of the same color with holes for his ears. Elazul wasn't quite sure why, but most girls (and Pearl) he'd mentioned them to thought they were cute.

Rei shook her head. "Dud!"

"Duda dub ba! Duba dub ba?" _That _Elazul could translate from the scraps he'd paid attention to. _I like night. Do you like night?_

"Dub!" was Rei's instant reply. The Dudbear chattered something that the Knight wasn't even going to begin to try and understand, but Rei glanced at her lamps, grinned even _bigger_, and proudly replied, "Dub!"

"Duda duba dubba, dub!" proclaimed the odd, toy-like bear. Rei used her trusty 'dub!' and had it echoed back at her.

Holding up her prizes, she asked, "Dada dadda?"

The Dudbear immediately claimed the lamp dangling from her right hand, a pretty thing of purple and green bits of glass shaped like a cluster of bellgrapes, handed over the required Lucre, and beamed at Rei. "Dub!" it declared, and proceeded to examine its prize more closely. Rei waved goodbye with her now-empty hand and scampered back down the stairs to the ground floor, weaving around the rough, circular wooden tables to reach the second Dudbear.

Elazul sort of tuned out the rapid-fire babble the two spoke after Rei had greeted her next 'customer', choosing instead to stand back and watch her work. He'd never actually met someone who made friends as easily as breathing; asleep or mourning, the fire in her was muted, but now that she was awake and active? He'd be willing to bet his core that not even the coldest heart could stand against her.

"Dada dadda?" There went another lamp. Having been born with little more than a sense of aesthetics and not the massive amount of fashion or design that some were gifted with, Elazul wasn't capable of properly describing the second of the three, only that it was very colorful and made with a number of thumbnail-sized clear pebbles.

Rei waved to the departing beastie and stood, whirling around to catch Elazul by surprise. She had a knack for it, it seemed. "Elazul, for Mana's sake, quit _brooding_," she grumped at him. "You were enjoying life just fine a few minutes ago."

"I was _thinking_," he corrected her, just as grumpy. Rei's frown turned into a bright, cheery grin and she reached over to tweak the tip of his nose.

"No wonder you had such an odd expression," she teased. "Thinking must have been frying your brain."

He growled and made a swipe at her; she easily danced out of the way and headed back towards the entrance of Lumina, calling over her shoulder that she had seen a third Dudbear across the foot-bridges and she was going to see if he/it wanted to buy her last lamp.

Elazul made a mental note that it was ridiculously easy to make Rei happy and to take her mind off of darker things. Just give her something to do that would help someone, and have it take her somewhere interesting. Wearing a small, pleased smile that his mission had succeeded so well, he contentedly ambled after.

———

It made the Jumi Knight happy to know that Rei's irresistible charm worked even on cranky Dudbears and proved his theory right. The third beastie had had his little stub of a tail in a twist over something, but all it had taken was a little talking on Rei's part and the Dudbear had declared himself/itself her friend by the end of the conversation.

So now they were heading back to the shop at a satisfied trot, Rei humming under her breath in anticipation. She was happy that she was helping someone—not Gilbert, he really _was_ too silly for her to take him at all seriously—make their life better. Helping people felt really good. And learning something new in order to help was just plain _fun_. Now she knew Dudbear and could confuse the blazes out of Xan when she finally bumped into him again.

Unless he'd learned it, too. Then they could confuse _everyone else_ by talking in it. That sounded even _more_ fun. Oh, except Elazul. If he'd been listening to the barkeeper's lesson, he knew some Dudbear, too. Hm.

Briefly, Rei felt surprise that she'd managed to get over Rubens' death so quickly—or at the very least, that she was having entirely too much fun so soon afterwards. Then she simply chalked it up as the way her mind and personality worked, and continued her light-hearted plotting.

_I'll deal with Sandra when I catch up with her. No use making myself miserable while I wait._

Gilbert was waiting for them at the top of the stairs, apparently over his pout, and the centaur beamed when he spotted the three pouches cradled in Rei's arms. "You sold them all!" was his approving greeting when they came into normal ear-shot. "What talents you have!"

"She's got something, all right," muttered Elazul good-naturedly. He stepped adroitly aside as Rei's heel sought his toes.

Gilbert didn't seem to have heard him, too busy collecting the pouches of Lucre from Rei and turning a shining face to the doors of the lamp shop. "It's now time to open your hear to me, sweet Monique! Come with me," he told the two fighters, "I'll show you what true love is!" And he trotted eagerly into the 'Limelight'.

"I'll get your foot next time, Elazul, just you wait," muttered Rei as they followed the centaur into the 'Limelight'. Elazul's reply was a quiet snicker.

Inside, Gilbert had gone straight up to the counter and lay, not only the three pouches from the Dudbears, but another thick pouch made of blue leather onto the polished surface. "Ah, my strawberry! We sold all of your six lamps!" he declared, making Monique's eyes light up in delighted surprise.

"Oh my! That's wonderful!"

Gilbert caught up one of her hands again, and this time she let him, the centaur dropping a light kiss on her knuckles. "You put your heart and soul into making them, baby! Of _course_ they sold!"

"They were pretty, too," Rei murmured to Elazul from where they stood just inside the door. "That helped." Elazul shushed her, not wanting to miss a single, saccharine moment.

Meanwhile, Monique had decided that she would stay as the town's lamp-maker, which had caused Gilbert to strike another one of his poses and proclaim, "Oh, darling…not as a lamp-maker! You will become the sunlight that will brighten my world! Come on, my love! Let's go out to feel the shower of stars above us! The world was created just for today to happen!"

"I was thinking about going out there, too," the young woman admitted. "I've been inside six full days working on those lamps!" And then she floated gently over her counter, half-a-dozen long feathers like the one Rei and Elazul had seen earlier lofting her into the air. Her feet were a bird's, with long toes and pearly claws. The two fighters blinked and stood aside as the couple headed outside.

"Did _you_ realize that she was a Siren?" Rei asked Elazul blankly. He shook his head, as taken aback as she. In silence, the two left the empty shop and went out into the twilight.

Outside, Monique and Gilbert stood together on the balcony where the centaur had been singing earlier. Now the air was filled by the sweet sound of Monique's voice as the Siren sang. Beside Elazul, Rei made a wondering sound and leaned against a convenient wall, closing her eyes to listen better. The Jumi Knight himself was caught by the music, swept away in the rise and fall.

There was so little distance between the shop and balcony that the traveling pair had no trouble hearing the conversation that arose between Gilbert and Monique, the Siren's talents such that she had no trouble keeping up the song and talking to her beau.

"Monique…I have a dream I wish to tell you."

"Sure, Gilbert. Let's talk about our dreams."

"Just grab a passer-by, and you'll sell all your lamps."

"The few fans of my lamps come from afar just to buy them." Elazul glanced down at the young woman standing entranced beside him, remembering that she'd mentioned something about getting a recommendation for the shop here.

"Let those Dudbears do the dirty, messy work."

"I really enjoy the time and effort that put into them."

Gilbert made an expansive gesture. "Let's have…a famous designer make a masterpiece!"

"It's fun to gather odds and ends to make unique lamps."

"That's all we'll do, and we'll be rich before we know it!"

Monique's voice was quiet when she said, "I have no income, but the joy I get out of my work is what I live for."

Gilbert took a breath, then turned his gaze from the stars to her face. "…Don't you have dreams?" he asked at last. "This is depressing me."

"…Every day is a dream-come-true to me," Monique replied softly, almost lost beneath her song. "You make me feel as if I'm denying who I am."

Gilbert realized he'd stuck his hoof in his mouth and tried to backtrack, striking another one of his poses. "Come, my princess! Let's go out and see the world!"

But Monique wasn't buying it. She turned to him, hurt in her eyes. "Which of my dreams do you see as illusion?" she demanded. "My dreams? Nightly dreams? Hopeful dreams?"

All the pleasure went out of Gilbert's body language, and he turned to her in sorrow. "Monique, our dreams don't seem to play in perfect harmony." He shouldered his lute and pushed a fist into the air as he decided, "I must leave this town to look for a love!"

Monique blinked and Rei levered herself off the wall, surprise written clear in both the females' faces. "Oh my, Gilbert," Monique said softly. "You came to that conclusion quickly. After I recover from this shock, I, too, shall find a new love."

He swept into a low, dramatic bow. "Goodbye, love! I shall never forget you, baby!"

Monique murmured, "Goodbye, Gilbert. Goodbye," as she watched him gallop out of sight. She took a deep breath, looked up at the stars for another few moments, and then went back into her shop without another word.

Rei slumped back against the wall, sighing regretfully at the loss of the beautiful music. Elazul tapped her shoulder and gestured to the 'Limelight'; she nodded and followed him for a change, back into the warmly lit building.

"Monique?" Rei queried gently, peering around Elazul. The Siren gave them a watery smile, back behind her counter.

"Gilbert was a little bit strange, but he was a nice guy," she said. "He just wants a bigger lamp that the little ones I have. Size is completely meaningless. Because all that matters is that it works, right?" Her smile vanished, and she drooped. "To be honest, I'm just a little depressed."

"Dub!"

All three in the shop jumped at the enthusiastic greeting, Monique looking puzzled at the sight of three Dudbears marching into her shop. Rei and Elazul hastily moved to the left of the counter, into the alcove there, as the trio of patchwork creatures beelined for the counter and started chattering in their tongue-twisting language.

Monique brightened. "Really?" The leader, whom Rei recognized as the first Dudbear she'd sold a lamp to, added another long string of nonsense that was just as enthusiastic as the first greeting. Monique waved her hands and replied, "Oh, no! I should be the one thanking _you_!" A burble or two more, and then the Dudbears left, leaving a beaming Monique behind.

"Translation?" requested Elazul. Rei shrugged, having been unable to translate any of it thanks to the speed they'd used, only able to pick up strong approval.

Monique smiled happily at them. "The Dudbears told me that they really love my lamps! This is why I love this job! This is so great! Here, take this!"

Rei smiled back after finding a pewter spoon and a fragile rose made from sand in her hands, tucking them into her pack and resting her elbows on the counter. "Thank you. But actually, I originally came here to buy a lamp myself. Can I see that one?" She pointed to the wall behind the Siren, to where a small firefly of light hovered in the shadows.

Elazul wondered why she wanted one so dim, but then a smiling Monique placed a delicate creation of driftwood and glass on the counter. Dry vines curved to support a hood of green glass and wire, colored paper folded into tiny sprays of blue wisteria flowers that hung around that tiny spark of light.

Callused fingertips traced the vines; rested on the leaf-patterned shade. A gentle breath encouraged the crystal to grow brighter, casting light on Rei's pleased smile. "I like this one. It's a sweetheart."

"I made this one a couple of years ago," Monique told her as she began wrapping it for the journey. "Lots of people have looked at it, but they never showed much interest. And the crystal never lit up for anybody, even me. But I never had the heart to just give it away."

Rei gave her a slow smile that Elazul hadn't seen before, the sprite suddenly appearing mysterious in the uneven light of the little shop. "You don't find a lot of things that have patience these days," she commented, cradling her new prize when it was returned to her, safely encased in layers of paper. "How much do I owe you?"

A few minutes later, Elazul and Rei emerged into the twilight of the streets, lamp tucked securely in Rei's seemingly-bottomless pack. They'd said good-bye to Monique, with an additional promise from Rei to swing by again in a few weeks to pick up a shipment of lamps to sell in the marketplace at Domina.

"So," Elazul spoke up as they ambled down the stairs to the narrow street that passed as the main thoroughfare, "where to next?"

Rei gave him a sideways glance from beneath her bangs. "What? Not anxious to get back to Pearl?"

Actually, he was, but he'd been thinking about that too. "A little, but I'm wondering if Pearl has a knack for avoiding bodily harm that she just hasn't had the heart to mention to me. What you said in Mekiv made me remember a lot of times she's wandered off, but I've never found her hurt from a monster. Any injuries she's had have been from things like Pearl wandering into a blackberry patch or tripping or something."

"Huh. Well, there aren't any blackberry patches in Domina 'cause they'll choke the crops, but there's probably plenty of things for her to trip over." Rei picked up her speed until she was in that ground-swallowing lope, Elazul keeping pace beside her. "Still, if we cut through the mountains just south of here we should get to Domina that much faster."

———

Elazul's comment on brooding: Yes, I know, pot calling the kettle black. ;D

Ehm, still nothing to say, really. Blah?


	6. Gorgon's Eye

First, let me apologize for not updating in two months. Real Life has been distracting, as has the copy of Ookami I borrowed from a friend. n,.,n! Thank you all for putting up with me, and I really, _really_ apologize for those who are waiting for me to repost my fourth Season Story. That hasn't budged at all, I hate to say.

Right! So, Fortune has both smiled on me and kicked my sorry butt to the curb. I'm going to have to be reworking some of the future chapters to work around the Dragons of Knowledge arc, since it seems the disc I own is too far gone even with resurfacing to actually play through the Bone Fortress. It always freezes when I pick a door after my pet monster (Nip, usually) springs the trap. So, I need to get a new copy, which is going to be mildly expensive. Like, $100 bucks expensive. My wallet cries.

On the other hand, I'm being given money every time I turn around. Bonus, paycheck, tax return (which was nice). I even have a new car radio, thanks to my dad, so I actually have music in my car again. (I think I mentioned about my old one dying…?) So hopefully I can get a new copy within a couple of weeks or so and can move on. (Please please please!)

Even better (at least for me) the house still hasn't sold. Three more days and our house goes off the market until spring. Which means I actually get to feed my brain since I'll be allowed to bring one bookcase's worth of books—plus bookcase—out of storage. Huzzah! ….Okay, enough chatter on my part! On to review replies!

**Shadow's Rage: **I don't work very well with emo characters. They refuse to stay emo. Seriously, they do. I've tried. I'm glad you're liking the story, especially since a good chunk of it is really how I tend to react to the story line. Wait until the chapter where Escad shows up. 'n,.,n' Our fan-encouraged couple are having enough trouble admitting that they like each other as it is, though. A love-crazy wannabe minstrel wouldn't help matters much…that, and I think Rei would play 'Pin-the-Tail' with Gilbert and her daggers. n,.,n! (Please note, I sometimes babble, too. It's no bad thing.)

**Tiamat42: **Ooh, love the name! And thank you for the wonderful compliments! I do agree on at least some of the dialogue that is part of the game, but some of it is rather nice. I happen to be a particular fan of the ultimate attack graphics, though, and the overall storylines. (And the music, mustn't forget the music…) I'll be working on the dialogue balance, I just have to hunt down and kill that little perfectionist part of me that keeps getting squicked at the thought of actually changing the lines when I have the darned script.

———

The forest around them was silent as Rei and Elazul trekked up a trail that, according to maps Rei had studied, would take them around Lake Kilma and down to the back fields of Domina via the mountains that held the lake in.

It was starting to creep Rei out.

"Where's the birdsong?" she murmured to Elazul uneasily. "I can't hear even a mouse in the bushes." The Knight didn't answer her, but his eyes darted warily all around them and his hand was curled around the hilt of his sword.

A rough voice was heard just over a rise in the trail, sounding as uneasy as Rei. "The scouts ain't back yet…Could the faeries have crushed them?"

Topping the rise, the two travelers nearly ran into a cluster of penguins blocking the path. All of them wore floppy, striped caps, coats draped across their sloped shoulders with a strap fastening the front shut, and heavily belted, loose pants. Rei had heard a passing merchant in Domina tell a story about how penguins once had hard, yellow beaks like regular birds, but she didn't know if it was true or not. The penguins she and Xan have encountered have all had flesh beaks covered in the same kind of feathers as the rest of their bodies.

Several in the group turned to face the newcomers, one holding up a flipper and demanding, "Halt, stranger! What be the password?"

The two fighters blinked, looked at each other, then looked back at the penguins. "What?" they asked in unison.

Immediately the band started whistling and clapping their flippers. The one who'd spoken beamed at them and turned to a walrus wearing a large red coat, a scarlet bandanna tied around his head instead of a cap. "Aye, very good! Cap'n! Our comrade has arrived!"

The walrus turned and balanced on his tail in order to point at the now-very-confused pair staring at the group. "That's no comrade! One look will tell ye that! Ye daft idjits!"

"But the password was correct!" protested several of his crew, silenced when the Captain slashed his fin through the air.

"Aarrr, shut up! Back to the ship before those faeries find us!" And without another word the whole motley group pelted up the trail and out of sight.

For several long moments Rei and Elazul stood where they'd stopped, blinking their confusion. Finally Rei reached up to scratch where her neck joined her skull and shook her head, making her hair-pipes chime. "I swear, I meet the weirdest people when I'm with you, Elazul," she commented, and continued up the trail.

"Hey!"

They continued up the trail for a minute or two, following it when it bent sharply left and started to rise. "So what can we expect around here?" Elazul asked, eyeing a trio of penguin statues in various poses of surprise.

Rei shrugged. "I'm not really sure," she admitted. "I've never really been in this area before. Xan's tried taking me to see the lake, but I never made it past the marker at the head of the trail Domina-side. Something always made me stop and turn back. Drove Xan nuts."

"I can sympathize," Elazul muttered, and yelped when her heel found his toes.

"Gotcha!"

"Violent little cat, aren't you?"

She wrinkled her nose at him and continued where she left off. "According to my brother, there are some interesting monsters around here. Rabites are pretty scarce, but Spiny Cones are pretty common," she said, naming the little monsters made out of earth and moss that threw rocks and poisonous gases. "He also said to watch out for pink jelly-fish things called Tezlas, floating purple turnips he named Shrieknips, and winged snails called Denden. We met up the last ones down in Mekiv, remember?"

"I remember."

"Okay. Xan said that pretty much everything else in here is small fry, and that the Chobin Hoods here had worse tempers than normal." They hit a place in the trail where it broadened out and found several more penguin statues, all but one poised in mid-flight. Rei peeked around the one simply standing in the middle of the path and found a green box at (presumably 'his') feet. It held a pearly claw as big as her hand inside, and that was all.

"Excuse me, youn'un," spoke up someone from farther into the clearing. Rei squeaked, jumped, and nearly fell into the box on top of the claw. Elazul caught her by the back of her outfit and hauled her upright again, then looked where the voice had come from.

Rei pulled loose and trotted over to where a large turtle-man lay on his back, apparently unable to rise. "Um, sir?" she ventured, and the creature craned his head up to look at her, revealing some of the bushiest eyebrows she'd ever seen on anyone.

"Hello," he greeted kindly, "I'm just a turtle. I have a favor to ask you…" He pointed at his feet with a flipper shaped vaguely like a hand. "Could you stand still right there for me?"

"Right here?" Rei asked, moving to the indicated place.

"Yep. Now stay right there." And before the knife-fighter could say anything else, the turtle somehow used her as a lever to get himself spinning rapidly. She wasn't quite sure how. But it took only about ten seconds for him to spin himself right back onto his feet, humming a little ditty as he did. Getting over her surprise, Rei stepped forward and helped to dust off his shell once he was steady.

He tugged a worn, applesock-red scarf straight, then gave her a pat on the shoulder and a grateful head-bob. "Thank you, young'un. The pirates did this to me," he explained in his dry, creaky voice. "They trampled me on the way to look for their 'treasure'." He looked at her appraisingly, then at Elazul when the Jumi youth handed her the claw she'd nearly squashed. "By the way, can you see the Faeries right here?" he asked.

In the middle of tucking the claw away into her ever-present pack, Rei looked up in startlement, then ran her eyes around the clearing. "There are Faeries here, grandfather?" she asked, hopeful. She'd always wanted to see one, even though ground-bound two-leggers weren't exactly popular with them after the Faerie Wars about ten centuries ago.

"I don't see any," seconded Elazul, and the old turtle smiled, nearly making his bright black eyes disappear into a fan of wrinkles.

"Faeries here don't show themselves to just anyone," he told them cheerfully, "unless they think you're harmful. It seems like the faeries here trust you. I will cast a spell on you so you will be able to see them."

Elazul twitched when a shower of sparkles surrounded Rei and himself, a trio of eye-shapes whirling around them for a moment to the tune that the grandfather turtle was sing-songing. Rei made a wondering sound at the sight of three or four little beings that zipped rapidly back and forth and immediately went up to one to talk to it.

"Now you can see the faeries," the turtle said, sounding not one whit less cheerful than before, and left. Rebuffed by the first faerie, Rei started to walk over to the second, and Elazul took the opportunity to snag her wrist and tug her along the trail and up the left path when the way split. She waved goodbye to the faeries and the turtle and went along with her friend. She ran smack into him when he halted abruptly.

"What's the ma—" she began, peering around him like she'd done with the pirate. A peeping sound alerted her to the reason, and she immediately rounded Elazul while digging out some of the fruit she'd packed for her trip to Lumina. "Go hide!" she hissed to the Jumi youth as she picked an open spot on the ground a couple of yards away from the monster egg currently exploring the small cul-de-sac clearing.

Obligingly he ducked behind a shrub as Rei came running back and ducked in beside him, peering around the leaves as the egg ambled on a pair of short, fuzzy legs over towards the food on the ground. "It's a Beast egg," she murmured, entire body tensed to pounce. "No telling what it'll turn out to be."

Her companion grinned at the way she settled back like a cat waiting to jump, then sprang out of hiding to scoop up the egg that had gorged on the fruit and immediately fallen asleep. Her face was alight with glee as she put her fingers to her mouth and whistled shrilly. There was the sound of beating wings, then the mail-carrier Pelican dropped out of the sky and scooped up the egg from Rei's lifted hands.

"Take eggy-egg!" the bird sing-songed. "Back to the corral I go!" She vanished in a flurry of wings back above the treetops.

"That was interesting," Elazul observed, coming out from behind the shrub and dusting off his cloak.

Rei grinned at him and explained, "It's something Duelle and Amelia worked out back when Xan first started actively searching for monster eggs. The whistle is actually a spell that works like a signal-flare to let Amelia know that one of us has caught an egg."

"And Pelican doesn't mind?" Elazul queried as they retraced their steps to take the other fork.

"Not really. There's not a lot of mail to deliver in Domina, so this gives her the excuse to fly all over the place. I swear, that bird can go supersonic if she wants to."

Elazul laughed, and they trekked up the path.

———

They'd gone another mile or two along—finding the aforementioned monsters and a handful of other kinds already encountered in other places—when the captain's gravelly voice was heard from around another bend. "Penguins! We face too great a risk! Back to the ship!"

"Cap'n!!" a penguin's voice rose. "You ain't gonna leave our 'stoned' mates behind, are you!?"

The pirates came into view, as flustered as they sounded. The captain had risen on his tail again and was glaring at the whole sorry lot. "That's 'petrified' and NOT 'stoned'! Was that supposed to be a joke!? One more stupid joke, and I'll have ye all k…k……"

The pirates clustered around their captain, expressions shifting from anxiety to expectation. The walrus took a deep breath. "…Klunked in yer heads!"

The entire crew and Rei facefaulted, Elazul making a snort of amusement.

"Cap'n! That ain't a powerful enough threat!" cried one penguin.

Another penguin took a step forward. "Say 'I'll kill ye all!' for us, Cap'n!"

"All of our penguin hearts beat with yours, Cap'n!" came from a third.

The walrus looked abashed. "But…'kill' is such a strong word. Me mother said so before, ye know?"

"They call themselves 'pirates'?" Elazul muttered to Rei, who nodded fervently.

The apparent spokespenguin stepped forward and proclaimed, "All of us came this far because of you! Say it, Cap'n! Like a REAL pirate!"

The walrus hefted himself back onto his tail, pointing at his crew with a glower. "Then listen, penguins! One more stupid joke, and I will…KILL YE ALL!!"

The ensuing whistle-fest nearly deafened the two travelers, mixed in with cheers and clapping. "That was wonderful! Ye are a REAL pirate!" the penguins cheered, one of them pumping his fin in the air and yelling, "Now let's go avenge our stone-ified shipmates!"

"We'll not be doin' that now, penguins! Back to the ship!"

Taken aback, the crewmember that had made the pun about the others being turned to stone raised a flipper. "Forsake the lake to see the sea!" he suggested. "See?" And the group ran off again.

Elazul raised a green brow and looked over at Rei. "Have you noticed that they just keep running deeper into Faerie territory?"

"Yeah, actually. I guess they've got no sense of directions when they aren't on a ship."

———

Nearly ten minutes of walking later, Rei's frown was getting progressively deeper as the slope of their path got sharper. Her legs hurt from the climb, and the monsters had gotten more persistent the farther they'd gone. Not to mention that ninety percent of the faeries they'd encountered were grumpy about having a human in their territory—nevermind that she kept patiently explaining that neither she nor her friend _were_ human. Elazul was glancing at her frequently, somewhat puzzled as to why she was frowning.

"What's the matter?" he finally asked.

"Well, the path Xan told me about led around the side of the lake. This one looks like it's going…um, straight isn't the word…but it seems pretty set on going _to_ the lake instead of around it. And he said that I _really_ didn't want to go to the lake unless I felt like fighting."

They took a few moments to chase off a Grey Ox blocking the way, and kept walking. They found themselves on a promontory jutting out over the lake, to find a faerie with hair like a purple thistle and the walrus captain near the very edge.

"You must sacrifice yourself to the master too!" the faerie ordered, holding up a slightly larger version of the stone eye that Pearl had given to Rei. Her victim hefted himself up onto his tail again and began to protest his innocence, only to gurgle into silence at a razor-edged beam of light that exploded from the eye and blinded everyone for five heartbeats. The two fighters blinked the spots from their eyes in time to see a stone statue of the captain fall from the edge of the stone jut.

A dry tsking came up from just behind them as the faerie took up a post hovering a yard or two past the end of the rock. The grandfatherly turtle waddled up from the treeline and shook his head as he came even with the knife-fighter and the Jumi Knight. "Oh, my, this is getting worse…"

Rei kept an eye on the faerie and leaned over the edge, setting her pack down and studying the best way to get down. "Once you go down, you can't get back up by yourself," commented the…Rei blinked, then whipped her head around to stare at the _Wisdom._ "He must be worth risking your life for, hm?"

"No, sir, she just has this thing about helping people," sighed Elazul, setting down his own pack and walking over to Rei.

"Elazul's right, Wisdom Toté. I can't just leave him down there."

"Wisdom?" Elazul yelped, just as Rei grabbed him and jumped. His curses rose to the ears of the Wisdom standing at the edge, along with the audible thump of two bodies landing.

"I shall go too," decided Toté, and he sent himself tumbling after.

It took a few moments for everyone to untangle themselves after landing; Elazul was swearing heartily at Rei for pulling him like that and not telling him that the ancient-looking turtle was a Mana-blest Wisdom. Rei was grumping back that she didn't _know_ that Toté was a Wisdom until thirty seconds ago because it had been a few years since she'd read the book about them, and she'd thank him if he _stopped yelling _in her_ ear._

The penguins that had been already down there were having fits because their captain was stone; their gabbling nearly drowned out the bickering friends ten feet away.

Toté had dusted himself off and waited until everyone had quieted before he commented, "Humans think the master of the lake hid the treasure. Faeries believe they will die if the master dies. But both are myths."

"Shut up, turtle!" shouted one of the penguins. Neither Rei nor Elazul were sure which one. "Do somethin' about our Cap'n!"

Toté rubbed at his chin with a flipper for a few moments, studying everyone. At last he said, "Well, then, how about if you penguins become live bait, and…" he turned to face Rei, "…that person over there brings down the master?"

Rei blinked. Looked at the penguins. Looked at Toté. Took a step back with a little 'eep!' and, "Wha..wait, me?"

The penguins muttered amongst themselves for a moment, then one piped up. "Uh…and that master is huge or somethin'?"

"Yes, he is."

Another queried, "Um……how big is he?" The Wisdom proceeded to measure a distance of about twenty feet, and the penguins gulped. "W-well, I guess yer strategy ain't so b-bad…"

Toté sighed and shook his head, as a teacher who was disappointed in his students. "At least I will start this for you," he scolded in his dry, kindly voice. He then waddled over to the stone Captain, hefted it up, and flung it into the lake. Yelling in dismay, the penguins dove into the water after it. After the last penguin had jumped in, the Wisdom turned to Rei and Elazul. "Now it is your turn to take over."

"I am placing full responsibility on your scrawny shoulders," Elazul growled as he loosened his blade in its sheath.

"It is so placed," Rei sighed. Disturbed by the commotion, a giant shelled creature that appeared to be a cross between an urchin and a super-sized Beholder exploded from the depths of the lake and hovered over the narrow spit of land. The two fighters tumbled backwards to avoid the long guard-spikes protruding, Rei bouncing off the rock behind her to launch herself high enough to land on the creature's back.

Elazul swore at her for crazy maneuvers as he hacked and slashed at the crustacean, sword leaving long gashes in the algae-slick shell. Rei snarled back as she nimbly avoided the shorter spines scattered around the long ones. Her knives, forged out of the highly durable Vizel gold and tempered with not only Elemental Coins, but things like Sun Crystals, easily pierced the shell and dug into sensitive flesh.

The Master of the Lake screeched, spinning itself like a top and throwing the sprite off its back and into the side of the cliff. Rei got herself turned around barely in time to hit feet-first, flinging herself into a rolling dive that brought her to the long spine underneath the Master's belly.

Elazul whirled his sword into a move he called 'Cutting Pines', sending energy blazing in a diagonal line to slam into the large eye peering out from the front of the shell. Rei's knives slashed up, the Jumi Knight recognizing the attack named 'Pouncing Cat' by his friend—a favorite of hers.

After what seemed like hours, Elazul's blade plunged home and their opponent's death-scream echoed over the lake. Ability to hover gone, the belly-spike sank into the ground while the gigantic eye glazed, then grayed out into dull granite. Too heavy for the long belly-spine to support, the deceased monster tipped backward to vanish into the lake.

Rei panted and glanced up at the sun as she used an arm-guard to wipe the sweat off her forehead, surprised to find that the glowing disk had barely moved. Less than ten minutes had passed since the fight had begun, but her body felt every minute of it. With twins sighs, the fighters plopped down on the ground in exhausted heaps.

Not long after, more than a dozen penguin heads popped up from the water, followed by the rest of the penguins themselves and a very disconcerted flesh-and-bone walrus. Toté also appeared from wherever he'd been, giving the two weary fighters pats on their shoulders as he waddled over to where the 'live bait' was climbing out of the water.

"You should thank those two," he told the pirates firmly, gesturing to where Rei had flopped back and lay prone on the grass-spattered dirt, letting the cool ground suck away the last of the battle-rush. Elazul was checking his sword for damage—though considering it had never gotten damaged before, no matter what he did to it, he didn't expect it to need repairing.

The penguins immediately burst into a confusing gabble of thanks, silencing themselves at a wave of their captain's flipper. Neither fighter bothered to look up to see the bristly moustache dip into a nod of thanks, forcing the walrus to clear his throat and say, "My thanks to ye both. I'm Captain Tusk and this be my crew."

"Rei Venstry," came one response, a maroon-covered arm rising briefly. Mana bless, but Rei can't remember being this tired in _ages_.

After a considering look, Elazul granted his name, ignoring the penguins once he had. The crew was busy discussing how to get back up, something that he was too tired to care about at the moment. After several minutes of arguing, the penguins stacked themselves into a living ladder that stretched the thirty or so feet back up to the jutting rock.

Captain Tusk was figuring out that the rest of his crew had likely returned to normal and was impatient to go, but he had manners enough to insist that Toté and the two fighters go first. Toté studied the ladder for a moment, then asked, "Could you make the slope a bit easier on my back?"

"Shut up, sea beastie!" gritted one of the penguins near the bottom. "This is all we can do!"

The Captain's tail lashed. "Do as he says!"

A few minutes later, gazing at the low slope of the new 'ladder', Toté shook his head and chided, "It doesn't reach the top of the cliff, penguins."

Rei smothered her giggles in her sleeve as one penguin moaned, "We should never go ashore again." But at last the group found itself back on the top of the cliff. The pirates wasted no time in bolting for their ship; Rei had no idea where it could be, since the closest port was Polpota Harbor four days' travel from here and she didn't know of any nearby rivers big enough to take the kind of sea-going ship the pirates used.

She, however, was not going to worry about it. After getting herself a safe distance away from the cliff-edge, she let her legs fold and planted her rump firmly on the ground. "I vote we pass on trying to get to Domina by tonight and make camp," she groaned, resting her chin on her drawn-up knees.

Elazul sighed, looked at the sun sliding merrily for the horizon, and eased himself down with a little more grace. "Much as I hate to admit it, I think I'll second that," he answered, pulling his sleeping roll from his pack and working to unroll it. "I don't think either of us could keep our usual pace right now."

"Nope. I'd say not." The knife-fighter quickly set up her own bedding and cleared space for a small fire, knowing that the air cooled off quicker and farther the closer one was to a water source. She thought longingly of hot baths and bit her tongue, knowing that Elazul was likely as every bit as sore as she was.

"You know, I don't think I'm going to put much credit in your shortcuts anymore," Elazul complained lightly as they got out things to make dinner with. "I always seem to end up fighting something big when I'm with you."

"No monsters in Lumina," his companion pointed out with a yawn. Briefly she wondered where Wisdom Toté had disappeared off to; then she shrugged, figuring that anything stupid enough to mess with a Wisdom deserved what it got.

"Mekiv and here."

"You'da had to've fought the Du'Inke anyway 'cause you were lookin' for Pearl," Rei countered, "so this's the first time the monster was all my fault. Least nobody's gonna hafta worry 'bout getting' turned t' stone anymore. That rock the faeries were usin' don't work anymore."

"Go to sleep, wildcat," Elazul scolded. "I can't understand half of what you're saying. I'll wake you for dinner."

Rei stuck her tongue out at him but willingly curled up inside her sleeping bag, falling asleep within a few breaths of getting comfortable. Her companion just sighed, shook his head, and got to work making stew.

———

Late that night, Elazul woke for his turn on watch with the distinct feeling that all wasn't quite right with his world. Propping himself up on one elbow, free hand pushing his long green bangs out of his eyes, he blearily looked around for the source of that irritating whispery noise.

He found it only a few yards away. Rei sat propped up by a tree where she'd apparently fallen asleep during her turn, arms crossed defensively over her chest, both to keep her knives in easy reach and to help ward off the water-bitten chill of the air. Nearly half a dozen faeries were clustered around her; half of them hovered unsteadily in the air.

Two were perched on her shoulders, examining her hair-pipes in curiosity, tiny fingers running along the polished metal. None of them looked very old—and couldn't be, if they hadn't mastered the skills of flying yet—and not a single word of their strange language held any hint of malice or anger. They were just…curious. About her hair-pipes, about her arm-cuffs, about her costume, about her long, dusty gold hair.

Which, Elazul supposed as he tried again to get his hair out of his eyes and his brain into proper working order, was why he wasn't just leaping at them and squishing them. Instead, he blinked to unglue his eyelids and whispered, "Hey."

Squeaking in panic, the faeries scattered to the four winds before he could get another word out. Muttering under his breath about something that compared jumpy faeries to cats next to rocking chairs and certain sprites that could sleep through _anything_, the Jumi Knight peeled himself out of his bedroll and pulled his cloak on, shivering in the cold. He detoured around the smoldering embers that were left from their tiny fire to end up next to Rei, muzzy thought-processes doing their best to summon up a displeased scowl.

Somehow, though, he had a feeling that he wasn't mustering anything up but a weak frown. Instead of bothering to work up a proper glare, he just scooped Rei into his arms and plunked her into her own bedroll before making a few circuits of their camp to get his blood flowing. Through his watch, he kept sending glances over at the woman snuggled contentedly in her covering, calling to mind the instances where her reflexes had shown themselves to be set on a hair-trigger. Mana's grace, she'd killed a Rabite _in her sleep_ before when one had crept into their camp, hoping for an easy meal. And now she slept so hard an unfamiliar touch wouldn't wake her?

He'd be worried if the few moments of contact gained during the move between tree and bedroll hadn't shown him a steady pulse and a normal body temperature. Sighing, Elazul decided at last that he would never, as long as he lived, understand Rei.

———————————

I ♥ the Faeries in this game! And Tote, Tote is love.

But seriously…those penguins call themselves pirates?


	7. Reach for the Stars

Praise be, I got a new copy of Mana and finally got to play through the rest of the dragon arc. Darn thing needs more pauses at the end, though; I missed a few bits during the last scene at the tombstone because it was continual conversation and my cellphone video doesn't record more than about thirteen seconds. Ah, well. The story continues!!

**Tiamat42:** 'S okay. I have a memory like Swiss cheese most days. The main characters for the game are listed as 'sprites', which I had fun with and assumed that although they look human, Rei and her brother are not. Nor is anyone else labeled 'sprite' human, thus the existence of people with fruit for hair or butterfly wings. This was mentioned when Elazul was hitting himself that night by the fire on the way to Lumina. I'm glad you're liking my writing so far; sorry about the tense switch now and again.

**Starlight's Delight: **The shortage of good Mana fics frankly annoyed me and is one of the main reasons this one is even posted. Aside from the fact that I have a Rabite-shaped plot bunny permanently attached to my ankle. _—wriggles toes—_ There are one or two fics in here I'm a loyal follower of, mainly the one that was previously titled 'Lost Swords'. Don't remember who it's by, don't mind. It's fricken hilarious! (And Square can't make realistic characters because their games are supposed to be an escape from reality. It makes it harder for us if we have to worry about keeping someone 'in character'.)

**Shadow's Rage: **Welcome back! I love repeat-reviewers, have I mentioned that? Well, consider it stated with adoring vehemence, 'kay? Getting to your review, I personally always wondered how Pelican knew when to snatch an egg. (And why her name is mentioned only once or twice through the whole darned game.) I had loads of fun writing the jump-scene, especially the part after they'd hit the bottom.

And fear not! There will be plenty more fluffy, Elazul-irritating moments in the future where scenes permit. (It's hard to write pairing-fluff for someone who's not even present in the current scene, you know?) As for Escad, I'm going to be evil and simply say, "You'll see."

**bluedranzer77:** Yes, fluff. All ♥ fluff, may it live long and prosper.

**RaspberryIce7656:** Hello, welcome back! I had that exact experience with Monique the first time I played the game. Though mine was more a disbelieving, "How can she fly with just tail-feathers? WTF?" Thanks for the compliment on the battle; those scenes are never particularly easy to write, I'm always worried that they're moving too fast or too slow, or that I'm just repeating myself. So I guess it's so far, so good.

(OMG, I ♥ Ookami with all my gaming heart. The artwork is fantastic, the music is wonderful, and the plot never really slows down. My only complaint is what they make you do to get all of those damned Stray Beads. The last set of Gates is giving me hell with the last couple of rounds. At least Waka stays at the same darned challenge level. I swear a certain fox-lady's gotten harder. And those stupid Blue Tengu are driving me nuts. At least I know the igloo's weakness now: strike it on the belly when it rears. I will not surrender!!)

Apologies for the long review replies, I'm feeling chatty lately. Maybe it's because I'm on a regular sleep schedule again…?

———————————————————————

Rei kicked angrily at the sand bogging down her feet and swore, "Flammie's teeth! That the _last_ time I listen to Xan about directions!" When morning had dawned and Elazul had managed to rouse her from her dead-to-the-world sleep, they'd done a little searching and had, at last, turned up the path that Xan had told his little sister about. The problem was, that path didn't lead back to the edges of Domina.

Not unless Domina had suddenly turned into a bunch of cacti and sand as far as the eye could see. Which Rei highly doubted.

"I'm beginning to wonder whose sense of direction is worse," Elazul growled, hot despite his desert-made clothes. Full summer at noon in a desert was not his favorite place to be at all. "Yours, or those idiotic pirates."

"It's not _my_ fault that Xan can't give good directions to save his life!" Rei snapped back. "Grr! If I only I hadn't bothered with the—do you hear a lute?"

"…I do, now that you mention it. Wonder where it's coming from?"

Rei brightened. "Maybe it's somebody we can ask for directions!" And she slogged ahead in a slow-motion version of her normal lope.

"_Good_ directions this time, I hope," Elazul muttered, and slogged after her.

They followed the sound to a shallow bowl amidst a handful of dunes, ringed with cacti of all shapes and sizes. There they discovered half a dozen young boys dressed in loose, white sleeveless shirts and pants milling around the hollow. Over their white clothing they wore lightweight robes of either blue, green or brown, with turban-like hats to match. In the middle on a rock, a scaled foot propped on the opposite knee supported a worn lute being played absently by a female whose entire appearance screamed 'snake'.

Her knees bent opposite the normal way, legs clad in short reddish pants that were patterned like scales. It made Rei wonder how she got her foot propped like that. The rest of the female's clothing was a coat that was white with red trimming and buttoned twice just under her breasts. It split at side-seams and sleeves to accommodate both a tail tipped with a scarlet tuft of corn-silk hair, and the long arms wrapped in serpent coils. Her hands were three-fingered and tipped in heavy nails like her feet, though her hands had the addition of opposable thumbs. She looked like she'd have no problem running on all fours if she had to.

But most striking was the female's hair and face. Untamed strands that would probably be shoulder-length if tamed stood out in a softer version of an afro, a thick stripe of white bang falling over one green eye. Framing her face were more snake-coils, and as she looked up, the two friends found that one of those coils slid beneath the bangs to coyly hide that eye. The skin over her nose and from the cheekbones down was a warm sort of olive-green; the rest of her exposed skin was a much darker green.

Placing a hand across her lute's strings to damp them, the woman sighed and wondered aloud, "What should we do now…?" The approach of Rei and Elazul caught her attention and she looked over at them. "Huh? What are you doin' in a place like this?"

Rei was about to quip 'Being lost' but didn't get the chance. The second the woman had noticed the strangers and acknowledged them, one of the students straightened from his half-hearted search of the ground and demanded, "Is there a problem, ma'am?"

"Is someone bothering you, ma'am?" another boy wanted to know.

"Let's get 'em!" cried the first.

"CHAAARGE!" yelled every single one of the boys, converging on a very startled pair of fighters. Rei blinked, dodged the occasional fist that might have had a chance to connect—unlikely, given the way punches were being thrown so wildly—and noted that whoever was teaching this lot didn't know squip about hand-to-hand combat.

The woman who'd spoken to them rose to her feet, slinging the lute over her head on a leather strap. "Cut it out!" she shouted over the din of youthful battle cries. "Stop it NOW!"

"Aww, Miss Kathinja!" whined several of the boys.

Rei blinked. Kathinja? The professor that her apprentices had liked at the Academy? While she was wrapping her brain around that, said Miss Kathinja propped her hands on her hips and ordered, "These two aren't with Mephianse! Stop clobbering everyone you see!"

At least three boys edged back, one of them offering a meek, "Yikes! Please don't glare at us."

"We don't wanna explode," explained another student.

Kathinja made a snort of disgust. "Ha! You don't have what it takes!" She turned back to the bemused travelers to add, "We're looking for a guy named Mephianse. He stole an ancient spell book from the school's library. He gathered his students and came here to try out some of the magic. We want to retrieve the book, but the desert's too large. I don't know what to do…" And she mournfully plunked herself back down on her rock.

"We can help!" Rei told her.

"I wish you'd consult a fellow before you volunte–yeowch!" Elazul glared down at the sprite innocently smiling up at him as she removed her heel from his toes. "I know where you sleep," he threatened.

"I know how to cook better than you," she countered, beaming up at her taller friend when his scowl grew deeper.

"Touché."

Miss Kathinja ignored the banter as she slung the lute back in place behind her shoulder and stood, a broad grin revealing the tips of dainty fangs. "Hey, thanks! We'll find him sooner if we cooperate. I'm Kathinja, a professor at the—"

"Academy of Magic in Geo, yes, I know," Rei interrupted, reaching out and shaking the proffered hand. "I have two of your ex-students as my apprentices back home. Bud and Lisa."

"Really?" The reptile-woman appeared a little taken aback, then she grinned again. "Well, that's good. I'm glad they found another teacher. It wasn't exactly my idea to boot them out in the first place, but I don't have the deciding vote in the faculty."

"They're doing well," Rei told Kathinja seriously. "They just had some trouble controlling their magic, so I'm teaching that before I get them started on anything that can explode. My pet monsters love them."

"Good." Kathinja gave one last nod, then got them back onto subject. "We'll keep track of each other with the students as messengers." She turned, then paused, looking back over her shoulder. "Oh, and watch out…Mephianse's students will give you false info!"

"Got it." Rei gave her a cocky smile, and the professor lifted a clawed hand into the air.

"Alright, let's go!" The students poured down the trail after their teacher, leaving Rei and Elazul to pick their direction. At the moment, there was only the one opening through the dunes besides the one the two friends had come through, so it wasn't hard.

Sighing, wishing deserts weren't so hot, Rei jerked her head for Elazul to fall into step beside her as she slogged off. "I hate sand," she muttered to herself. "I hate sand, I hate the heat, and I hate irritating people who can't put their Flammies-bite-it evil plans into motion somewhere nicer."

Elazul sighed in heavier echo. "Of course they can't do that," he told her, only half in jest. "That would make things easier on us good guys."

———

A few minutes later, the clear space between the cactus-freckled dunes split into two, both with a boy standing guard on it. The boy on the path straight ahead called as they approached, "Miss Kathinja is over here, so you look over there!" And he pointed to the path leading off at a near-ninety-degree angle.

The student on _that_ trail scowled and called angrily, "He's lying! She didn't go that way!"

The first boy, dressed in green, yelled at the second, "_You_ are the liar! She DID come this way to search!"

Rei muttered something too indistinct for Elazul to catch, but it didn't sound particularly happy as she scanned the ground in front of them. "Sand's too soft to keep tracks," she told him under her breath. "Slightest bit of wind erases 'em like magic. We'll have to guess."

Meanwhile, the second boy (in blue) had yelled at Green, "You know that's not right! She came this way!"

Green shouted, "Liar, liar, liar! You're on Mr. Mephianse's side, aren't you!?"

"You're talking about yourself!" yowled Blue, and flung himself at Green. The two quickly started kicking up the sand in a battle royale that Rei had no fear about. It was pretty obvious neither were going to be able to do much other than cause a bruise or twain. Elazul grumbled, then pointed to the straight route with a questioning tilt to his head. The knife-fighter nodded, and they walked on.

The path dipped and rose to follow the low spaces between the giant mounds of wind-shaped sand, so the two friends didn't spot the next couple of students until they nearly walked over them. A few yards back, a cascade of sand poured from the rocky ground above them into a pile that never grew or shrank, proving that magic did funny things to the landscape. The route itself was blocked by the two students, dressed in green, standing side by side.

"You can't go through here!" piped one.

"Turn around and go back!" warned the other. When neither fighter said a word nor veered, the boy declared, "You're gonna regret it, young'uns!"

"Behold, and witness the great powers of the Twin Towers!!" cried the first. They leapt forward—only to have Rei and Elazul grab them by the scruffs of their tunics and plunk them gently in the sand on their butts to either side in one smooth motion.

The one Rei had grabbed blinked up into a pair of green eyes nearly burning under the sunlight. "Cubs should mind their elders," she countered mildly, voice at odds with her expression. The boy gulped, nodded a few times, and stayed where he'd been put until the two were well out of sight beyond the curve of a dune.

Only then did he rise, dusting off his pants in a mirror action to his friend. "That lady was almost as scary as Miss Kathinja," he confided to the other boy. "Only without the head-explody part."

The two jumped when the sandfall abruptly ceased, and a third student walked out from behind it. They saluted him as he spoke up with, "Hey, you guys! Did you take care of Miss Kathinja's pets?"

"Yes, sir!" replied the left boy.

The one who'd been grabbed by Rei pointed down the trail where two sets of footprints were smoothing themselves out and added, "We made them go this way!"

The newcomer twitched and yelled, "That's the RIGHT way, you dimwits!" He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Ah, well," he said in a calmer voice. "Next time you stop them any way you can, OK?"

The twins saluted again, having absolutely no intention of following that order. "Yes, sir!!"

———

Rei groaned quietly at the next 'checkpoint'. More than a dozen boys, all dressed in green and impossible to tell apart, milled around the twenty-foot hole between dunes, wearing the fiercest expressions they could muster. "You've _got_ to be kidding me."

"This road is closed!" was the immediate notification from the boy nearest them. Rei started to edge around him, only to have the student impose himself in front of her again. "Take another road!" he ordered. When Rei made to step around him a third time, he growled, "Turn back, already!"

"No!" snarled Rei, picking him up like she had the _last_ boy who'd tried to road-block her.

Kicking and wriggling in her grasp, her captive growled, "You're gonna force yourselves through here, huh? CHAARGE!!"

Shaking her head from that deafening shout, Rei plunked him into the softest pile of sand nearby and waded through the boys now converging on her and Elazul. Skilled as the two fighters were, they had no problem wading through the mess without getting hit once. The Jumi Knight winced as the last boy was scooped up and unceremoniously tossed on his rump when he wouldn't get out of the way.

"Next time it'll be a cactus you land on!" Rei informed the boy irritably as she walked out of the hollow.

"That was uncalled for, little cat," chided Elazul as they walked. He'd noticed that her temper had been rising steadily for the last mile or two and showed definite signs of breaking.

Rei blew out her breath and ran her fingers through her bangs. "I'm sorry, 'Lazul. I just…I just _hate_ hot weather, and this is about as hot as it gets. If it weren't for the fact that I don't know what kind of damage can be caused with that spell book, I'd say screw it all and let that Kathinja woman get it herself."

"But you can't, can you." Elazul made it clear that that was a statement and not a question.

Rei answered anyway. "No, I can't. Even though she and the other teachers left my apprentices to fend for themselves, even though having to fight when the sun is making my head pound is making me get madder and madder, _I can't._ Somebody needs help, and I'm here, so I _have_ to help. I can't help it."

Elazul just shook his head, raised his nose into the dry breeze, and suddenly tugged her off the path they were on. He led her around the edge of an upthrust rock and between a cleft of sandstone, and stood back to watch her reaction as they entered a tiny hollow no more than fifteen feet around in the dust and rock. The far lip was hardly visible for the lush plant growth ringing the space, although it opened up into a breathtaking vista of desert and blue sky.

Held in by a hip-high wall of stone was a natural sweet-water spring that wore a diamond necklace of sunlight on the breeze-ruffled surface. Rei's reaction was everything he could have hoped for; with a joyful noise, the knife fighter immediately went over and dunked her head straight in, right up to her shoulders. She came up blowing and laughing, pushing sodden bangs out of her face without caring that she was soaking her arm-guards.

"That's _soo_ much better!" she said happily, plunging her arms in to the elbow and leaving them there for a few moments. She turned that smile on Elazul and asked, "How did you know about this place?"

Elazul leaned against the stone wall guarding the place and let himself smile wistfully at his memories. "Before it was lost to the sands, the city of my people used to be within a day's walk of here," he replied, eyes on the sky beyond the bowl instead of on Rei. He missed the blink of shock and the near-trip into the water. "I used to come here a lot at the end of my patrols when I'd just won my Knighthood but didn't have a Guardian to protect, because nobody that I knew had found this place. It was a quiet place to cool off and think, and to just look up at the stars. One day, a year or two before the war with Deathbringer started, I came out here to discover Alex, one of our unpaired Knights, fighting with another Jumi. I yelled at him, and he ran off, leaving the other lying on the ground. It was someone I'd never met before, a pretty Jumi Guardian with a white core and blue-green eyes. I'd thought I'd met everyone in the city until then."

Rei straightened, looking around her with fresh insight. "You met Pearl here?"

Elazul nodded, still gazing off into the past. "That was the day I, an unpaired Knight, found the one I was to protect for the rest of my life. Not long after that, our greatest warrior disappeared while looking for the Mana Sword, and our Clarius was stolen out of her throne-room. We had to leave our city, and the Jumi scattered to the four winds." He sighed, long and hard, and pulled on a weaker version of his normal confident smile. "So. Cooled off, yet?"

"Almost. Lemme just refill my water bottle with something that doesn't taste like leather." Pouring what warm, leather-flavored water was left in her bottle onto the ground next to one of the thirstier-looking plants, Rei had topped the container up with cold, sweet liquid within a minute or two. Her hair was still dripping and so were her arm-guards.

"You look like a drowned Chobin Hood."

"Better a drowned Chobin Hood than a roasted Mad Mallard," was the playful retort. "I'll have to remember this place."

Elazul nodded, then gave in to the inevitable and his own yearning. He shrugged out of his dusty cloak and ducked his head into the water, shivering as cold soaked into his scalp. Unlike Rei, though, he only went so far as the top of his nose. When he came up, he wrung the excess out of his hair onto the plants and took up his cloak again.

"Now who looks like a drowned Chobin Hood?"

"A _happy_ drowned Chobin Hood," he corrected her, tugging his hood back into place. He dug into his pack and dug out a second cloak, handing it to the startled knife-fighter. "Here. I forgot I had a spare. This'll at least keep the sun off."

Rei took it with thanks and spent a moment or two trying to figure out how to fasten it shut. Elazul took over and had it wrapped correctly, so that it didn't need a brooch to hold it shut, within a breath. He tugged the hood gently over her head and hair ornaments, then stepped back. Rei took a pinch of the wrap around her neck and shoulders and raised it a little. "Wow. That was nifty. You'll have to show me how to do that, later. I suppose we'd better get back to hunting that rogue book-thief."

Elazul agreed, and they reluctantly left the oasis behind.

———

Fifteen minutes of slogging over hot sand and battling some of the weirdest monsters they'd ever encountered brought them to a wide space amidst the dunes, lined with sun-burnt rock and more dancing cacti. Rei walked a little closer to Elazul after they'd finished off a particularly creepy monster, one that was only a floating, leering demon head wreathed in purple flame, unsettled with the encounter.

"I know it's pointless saying it, but Mana bless, you'd think that _some_ laws of nature would be followed," she complained, rewarded with an agreeing snort and a pat on the shoulder.

"Hey!" came a shout behind them. "Wait for me!" Obligingly the two paused, allowing a breathless Kathinja to race up to them and brace her weight on her knees to pant. "Whew, I made it!"

"Made it?" Elazul inquired, turning his head to look to the far end of the clear space. "You mean we're almost there?"

That headful of wild red hair bobbed up and down. "The middle of the desert is just over there. There's an old device that's been half-buried ever since the First Wars. Mephianse is probably staging his experiments around it." Kathinja straightened, her wind recovered, and warned them, "So you know, Mephianse's sorcery equals two sorcerers' magic. Better check your equipment before we go!"

"Why check it?" Rei wanted to know. "We've been using it all day. Let's not dawdle. I, for one, want to get out of this accursed heat."

Kathinja blinked at her. "Heat? This is perfectly nice weather."

"That's because you're part snake."

"Part basilisk, actually."

Elazul waved a hand to get their attention, the blazing sunlight scattering on the polished facets of his gemstone arm-guard. "Whatever. The task at hand?"

Kathinja had the grace to look mildly abashed. "Right. Let's go!" And she raced off. The other two followed at the same pace, Rei murmuring things like, 'ice cream, Fieg Snowfields, Jennifer's chilled lemonade…' as she ran.

Just past the lip of the bowl-shaped flat, the desert spread out into another breath-stopping vista. Gleaming in the heat, a bulbous tube of metal more than twice Rei's height crouched in sand, students in green and brown busily working around it. Atop a spur of sandstone next to the tube was a bull-man built like a sword—long and thin—gesturing as he called out orders.

"Mephianse!" Kathinja yelled up at the bull-man, screeching to a halt.

The bull-man seemed to snap from a daze and glanced down. "So it's you, Kathinja…" he rumbled.

"Stop whatever it is you're doing, and return the spell book!"

Mephianse gave her a puzzled look, then understanding spread across his face. "Oh, that book…I discarded it."

Rei and Elazul facefaulted to Kathinja's shriek of, "_What!?_"

"Quite a useful book, I'd say," Mephianse drawled, his slow speech picking up in evident anticipation. "I memorized everything in it. How about a spell that creates a star…?" And he tilted his head, crowned in short green hair and a small pair of horns, towards the strange metal thing.

Kathinja looked at it in growing horror. "That machinery…you're going to use it to create a star!?"

"That's not all. I intend to make the stars move as I wish."

Rei muttered to Elazul that she felt like a third wheel with these two, while Kathinja responded to Mephianse. "No, you're not going to…?"

The bull-man smiled wickedly. "That's right. I'm going to destroy the earth by making all the stars fall!"

"I won't let that happen!" both Kathinja and Rei yelled, sunlight abruptly glittering on Vizel-gold knives that spun across scarred knuckles.

"Nothing can stop me now!" laughed the sorcerer, as he flung a hand out at them all. Elazul snagged Rei and covered both their faces with his cloak as a powerful wind shoved them and several pounds of sand back the way they'd come.

The two fighters managed to stop themselves by leaning into the wind and using Elazul's sword to stab the hard ground hidden beneath the shifting grains, but Kathinja had been well and truly caught and flew past them with a dismayed cry.

Rei and Elazul were shaking dust out their clothes when a pair of flightless birds as big as they were appeared, summoned, no doubt, by the sorcerer Mephianse. Matched beaks, hooked like boomerangs and sharper than axes, clacked in expectant blood-lust beneath flat golden eyes; heavily clawed talons raked the ground and flung up clouds of dust.

Rei and Elazul sighed, shared disgusted looks, and got to work.

Impatience and matching bad tempers had reduced the birds to vanishing piles of feathers and string-wrapped bones by the time an again-breathless Kathinja sprinted out of the dunes. Skidding as she stopped in front of them, the basilisk-woman panted, "He blew me outta the desert! We gotta catch up!"

Running back to the machine, she shouted, "Don't do it, Mephianse!"

Amidst dramatic gestures and the applause of his students, Mephianse cried, "And now, the greatest show of all time!"

"No!"

———

For miles, the inhabitants of the desert stared at the glorious, colorful lights that bloomed in the sky above them, accompanied by claps of thunder that vibrated in the very bone. Next to the cannon, Elazul tore his eyes away from the sight long enough to glance at his companion. Wonder and delight sang in the air around her as she clapped her hands and laughed, apparently recognizing whatever was going on up there.

Reassured that they weren't going to die, after all, the Jumi Knight returned his attention to what was really turning out to be the greatest show of all time.

Silence, broken only by the sound of Rei's ecstatic chuckling muffled behind her fingers, held for several long moments as everyone kept their gazes on the emptying skies once the last fire-flower had bloomed and died.

At last, Mephianse made an uncomfortable sound and rubbed at the back of his neck, looking thoroughly embarrassed with himself. Kathinja snapped out of her surprise and turned an uncertain half-smile at the bull-man. "Um…Okay, I guess that was pretty cool. Don't scare me like that again, you idiot."

Said idiot was glancing, puzzled, between sky and ancient cannon, muttering to himself as he apparently went back through whatever spell he'd used in his head, obviously wondering what had gone wrong. Rolling her visible eye, Kathinja just handed a still-grinning Rei a marionette doll that had definitely seen better days in thanks.

Elazul was about to ask why she'd been given a toy that lay in Rei's hands in a broken heap when his core rippled with nearby contained power. Giving the doll a closer look, the youth discovered that _it_ was the source of the strange feeling. He swallowed an exclamation of shock—people had been giving her _Artifacts_? He'd known some of the oldest Jumi in the city, once upon a time, and only a handful had had even _one_ of the powerful magical objects.

While Elazul was dealing with the whack Rei had just given his world (again), the knife-fighter was busy getting directions out of the two professors, high on the excitement that seeing fireworks for the first time in over ten years had given her.

"Domina?" Kathinja repeated in surprise. "Sugar, you're over a day's walk southwest of Domina. Fastest way there now is cutting across Madora Beach just north of here. Take a heading from the sun and walk straight north for about a day. Follow the beach east and it'll dump you right onto the western fields of Domina by dinner time."

"That is the _last_ time I use Lake Kilma as a shortcut!" groaned Rei, fingers tangled in her sand-grimed bangs.

"That's the last time I let you," Elazul added, giving her a light swat upside the head. The two walked off, feet following north unerringly as they argued lightly between themselves. The last thing that the professors and students heard from them as the two vanished around a dune was a wistful, female voice remark, "The only thing that would have made that better was if it had been at night."

——————————————

_Et voila! _The end of chapter 7!

Mad Mallard: A featherless duck-like monster that wears a green army helmet and lays exploding eggs. Avoid those, they hurt. XD


	8. Chapter 8: Summer Lovin'

—_cackles maniacally—_ Due to the fact that I have finally beaten that last set of infernal demon gates in Ookami, I am posting this chapter and the next in celebration! My strategy was: go through the first 'round' a few times to earn yen, then buy an unholy amount of vengeance slips and proceed to button-mash my way through. It took 70 slips. Mostly on the Evil Fox-lady (who shall go unnamed for those who haven't played the game), Waka, and Nagi. Dear gods, one Nagi was a pain in the ass. Three were just annoying. But I now have all 99 beads that don't include beating the game! Mwahaha-haha!

**Tiamat42: **—_shrugs_— I figured the makers labeling them as sprites in the encyclopedias had to be something interesting. Add a dash of overactive imagination and it becomes something fascinating to play with. I loved your review, by the way. (Flattery will get you bonuses!) I'm sorry I got you all tangled, though, I like reading your story.

**Shadow's Rage: **In every chapter I have some favorite little bit of something I've written. That was it for Duma. n,.,n It's so much fun tossing those together and watching the sparks fly. Oh, and don't be too upset. Escad will be making his appearance in about five chapters. (I know, it's a while, but hey, there's a bonus chapter with Elazul-fluff in there to enjoy while you wait.Um, it's not the next chapter, though.)

And before I forget, thank you for your other review for More Than a Scene. Eventually that will be incorporated into this story, but will still be a stand-alone piece in my archives. It always seemed to me that Lisa was the more mature of the two, so more mature she was written. n,.,n

**Zemratsu: **Welcome! Thank you for your kind words! n,.,n To answer your questions: (1) In game, with the proviso that one has beaten the game once. So around level thirty-ish when the fic starts. (2) No, but Bud will be getting a chance to travel soon _and_ will have his very own adventure. I haven't written one for Lisa yet, though. (3) Yes. The same chapter with all the Elazul-fluff, as a matter of fact.

**Starlight's Delight: **That's okay. I'm glad you wrote a review for this chapter. I like reviews. —_cheerful__grin_— I like writing flaws into characters, it makes them easier to relate to. Especially things like disliking heat. I'm the only one in my group who actually likes it…but that might be because I'm a thin-blooded scrawny little thing.

Reality. Psh. —_laughter_—

**RasberryIce7656:** Hello! Long time no see! I have prevailed against the monsters! Go me, gobe! (I can't believe I just said that… T.T) You are correct in your guess of the next location! And Mephianse always confused me, too. He hardly seemed to have a point except as a random plot twist.

I think that covers everybody…On to the chapter!

———

"And spreading before us is the area known as 'Madora Beach'," Rei was saying, her voice an imitation of a tour-guide's, pink-clad arm waving grandly at the sight of ocean spreading out past a ribbon of sugar-sand glittering white in the morning sun. "No littering, please, the locals get a little cranky about that sort of thing." She waved at the myriad crabs running amok over the sand. They'd already crushed several by accident when the little crustaceans had run beneath their feet.

"Says who?"

"Says Xan. He also says not to go west along the beach unless we feel like getting Boinked right back here." And Rei pointed to the waving tip of a Boink tail dancing above a tiny cairn of rocks as they passed it.

Voices caught their attention as they walked up between two palm trees, one of those voices sounding very familiar…

"Valerie, my love…I can't leave the cap'n and me shipmates…"

"Must you return to the ship, my darling David?" asked a light female voice. Just ahead stood two penguins, one in the garb of Captain Tusk's crew, and the other in blue and pink, with hibiscus blossoms tucked, one on each side, under the brim of a cap shaped like a Denden's shell.

The male penguin—presumably David—had just taken his beloved's flippers in his own, replying with a solemn, "There ain't no such thing as freedom for us henchmen, love."

"I know," sighed Valerie. "I should never have fallen in love with a pirate." To distract herself from the tears obviously threatening, she looked away from her beloved, and her eyes fell on the aforementioned amok-running pink crabs. She brightened a little. "Oh look, David! Cute little crabs are running around!"

"So they're crabs!" David looked, and paused. "Gee, they don't look as…well, crabby, today!"

Valerie turned back to him and took a breath. "David, I have…" she began, then trailed off. Her mate encouraged her to continue, looking a bit puzzled, but she just zipped off, crying, "Never mind. You should get going! I'll hatch it myself!"

The pirate lackey stood there, absolutely dumbfounded, not noticing the approach of an intrigued Rei and a bored Elazul. He tilted his head to one side. "Hatch……?" he repeated slowly, then his head went straight up and he raced off after his mate. "Valerie! Did you lay an egg!?"

Elazul made a faint sound of irritation and told Rei, "I've said it once, and I'll say it again. They call themselves 'pirates'?"

The knife fighter was eagerly tugging at his arm and grinning, excitement and curiosity making her eyes gleam and her hair fluff itself around her hair-pipes. "Come on, come on!" she urged. "I want to see what happens!"

Elazul regarded her with fond exasperation and allowed her to pull him in the direction that the lovers had gone. It was the way they needed to go, anyway. "You really are a little cat, aren't you? Curiosity's going to get you killed one day."

She raspberried him and ran off ahead, accidentally squashing more crabs despite her nimble attempts to avoid them. Elazul didn't even bother trying; he just walked normally, figuring that if the crabs wanted that badly to live, they'd avoid getting under his feet. He doubted he'd be able to lose Rei easily.

After all, he only needed to follow the faint sound of bouncing chimes as her hair-pipes tapped against each other, and her footprints in the sand.

He caught up to her just when she was slipping into the narrow opening of limestone caves, shaking a few fish-scales off his cloak from a brief—and messy—encounter with a fish-man he'd heard were called Sahagin. Their tridents were certainly pesky enough to deal with.

Rei went immediately into tip-toe mode the second the wet darkness had swallowed her, thanks to the pink crabs that had swarmed here, too. These, however, seemed to have more self-preservation than their kin on the beach, because they scampered clear quickly enough that only a few were lost under booted feet.

A foolish crab, combined with wet floor, made one of those thick-soled boots slide right out from underneath their owner, and Rei went backwards with a yelp and wind-milling arms. She braced herself for impact—only to feel none. Instead, unexpected warmth across bare shoulders where she'd expected the smack of stone floor. She cracked an eye open to find concerned blue gazing down at her, green bangs a nearly-black curtain in the ambient light.

"Are you hurt?" Elazul asked, nudging her upright and making sure she got her balance back before he let go.

A valid question. Rei moved her foot around thoughtfully for a moment to test her ankle, then replied with a slow, "No, I don't think so. Um…nice catch, by the way. Thanks."

"You're welcome." They'd taken a few steps forward when Rei noticed that the residual warmth from Elazul's arms was rapidly turning cold, and was starting to drip down her spine. A questing hand encountered wet smeared across bare skin and came back covered in dark liquid.

"Elazul, you're bleeding!"

"It's not my—" Elazul began, then let out a hiss as his arm twinged. Looking, he found a ragged, wicked slash running along the inner side of his forearm, just missing the large vein that sat just below the skin. Inhaling sharply, he gritted, "Okay, maybe it is. Ow."

"Darned stubborn, idiotic male," Rei scolded as she pulled out a vial from one of her pack's many pockets, popping the seal with a thumbnail. Elazul had no time to protest as his wrist was caught in a callused grip and the vial's contents splashed liberally over the cut. He yelped, attempting to pull his arm free as the stuff bubbled and hissed in the opening, but Rei's strength proved too stubborn.

"Damn it, Rei, that _hurts_!"

"Good," she retorted, conjuring a scrap of toweling from somewhere and wiping off blood and whatever concoction she'd used. "That means that even if your body won't react the same to an insta-heal potion, infections still get munched. Stop squirming."

"Ow, ow, _ow_!"

Rei was merciless. "Oh, suck it up. You're lucky this is so shallow and that it missed the arteries. It'll heal nicely if you just quit wriggling and let me bandage it."

"I can treat myself, you know!" Elazul growled. Rei just gave him a _look_, green eyes narrowed beneath a fringe of dusty-gold hair, that dared him to keep going. The Knight growled again, but gave up. Cotton bandaging was produced from the depths of Rei's pack and was quickly wrapped around Elazul's arm, binding the edges of the slash together.

Rei dusted her hands off after tucking her supplies and the empty vial back into their places, watching her friend tighten his muscles to check the fit of his wrappings. "How's the bandage?"

Elazul's reply was grudging. "Fine." A pause, and he added in a less grumpy tone, "Thank you."

"You're welcome. After all," her smile gleamed in the dimness, "I'd hate to have to explain to Pearl why I'm giving her Knight back all dented." Elazul muttered something that sounded uncomplimentary, and Rei pretended that the acoustics made it impossible to understand that he'd just called her a stubborn, wicked little cat of a trouble magnet. She simply used the scrap of toweling to wipe the blood off her back, wrapped it in extra bandage to keep it from staining anything, and stuffed it back into her pack. That done, she thrust a fist into the air and chirped, "Onward!"

"Rei?" Elazul was looking at her leg funny, after having tracked something through the mouth of the cave. It was hard to tell in the poor light, but it almost looked like he'd noticed…footprints?

"Yeah?"

"You're bleeding."

———

Half an hour later Rei was still not talking to Elazul as they walked through the caves, miffed about the Knight turning the tables on her so neatly. Okay, so what if she hadn't noticed that something had actually bitten her through one of her leg-guards? She hadn't been bleeding nearly as badly as Elazul had been, and another of her potions had taken care of the problem entirely.

"Are you sure those penguins went this way?" Elazul asked for the hundredth time, looking around them. They'd gone pretty deep into the cave system by this point, without a single sign of either bird. Just a lot of monsters, another egg, and one more cave of pink love-sick crabs.

Rei gave him a haughty, sideways glance and kept walking. Her companion let her get a few strides ahead, and then commented mildly, "You're sulking like a two-year-old, you know."

Those tanned shoulders quivered in indignation, but Rei kept her silence. Elazul found a side of him that had been buried a long, long time—the side that loved to tease—slowly unfurling somewhere inside himself. It had been a long time since he'd had the freedom to tease.

Well, he had it now. "Keep your nose in the air like that and you're going to walk straight into a stalagmite."

"I am _not_!" burst out of Rei on pure reflex as she whirled to glare at him. He only grinned at her; for some reason, it made her footsteps slow as she blinked at him. He tilted his head sideways to peer around his bangs at her.

"What's the matter?"

Rei whirled back around and resumed her stride. "N-nothing!" Mana bless, but she was glad he couldn't see her face right now. It'd probably be as red as a whalamato. Darting a brief glance over her shoulder at the man walking just a few paces behind, Rei wondered if he knew how devastatingly handsome he was when he smiled like that. And that cute way he had of hiding one eye with those long bangs of his kept making her heart kick up several notches.

_Gah! No! Bad Rei! No falling for the yummy Jumi Knight! Bad! Down!_

She managed to regain her composure within a few minutes, and had relented at last to resume conversation with Elazul. The two were cheerfully complaining to each other about how they kept ending up in places full of sand when they entered a large cave whose floor was scratched and scarred. There were a few standing pools of water glittering beneath an equal number of holes in the roof that created natural spotlights on pink and green stone.

"—terrible for footing," Elazul said, continuing their list of why they hated fighting on sand, and Rei added, "Gets into wounds."

"Gets into your eyes and mucks with your breathing."

"Too easy to turn into a weapon."

"And easy to hide—do you smell that?"

Rei lifted her nose and breathed in deep. "Yeah. Fresh air! We must have gone towards the surface without noticing. Look, there's an opening that I'd bet leads out onto the beach." Elazul followed her pointing finger to where a hole in the wall filtered in pale light.

They took a few steps forward…and then the floor shook. The Jumi youth grabbed Rei's shoulder and pointed towards the opposite side of the deep cave. Water, dark in the shadowy dim, roiled as something big began to surface.

Rei had the grace to look sheepish when Elazul yelled over the rumbling, "See? This is what I'm talking about! I _always_ end up fighting giant monsters when I'm with you!"

"Complain, complain!" Rei yelled back. _Oh, please, oh, please, don't let it be that 'Fullmetal Haggar' beastie that Xan wrote me about…_

Alas, her hopes were dashed, as a giant crab with a heavy, rocky shell emerged from the black water, one eye milky white beneath a ragged scar. Xan had written to her about it in the same letter that he'd written about getting Boinked across five miles of beach. _'Nasty, nasty temper, that fellow. I had to get into a disagreement with him the last time I came through there. I don't think he'll ever regain the sight in that eye.'_

"I swear, Xan, the next time I see you I'm gonna dunk you in the nearest body of water for this one," Rei growled as she raced on Elazul's heels towards their opponent. "Can't we just make for the exit?" she yelled to her partner.

Still running, Elazul jerked his head towards the giant monster. "Do you really think he'd let us?"

Rei sighed. "Suppose not." Blades catching what little light there was, the two fighters threw themselves into battle.

———

Nearly twenty minutes later, tired and bruised, Elazul and Rei emerged out into the sunlight. The Jumi Knight was cradling his arm against his chest, pain set in lines around the corners of his eyes. Rei was muttering about needing to rewrap his injury, then she yelped when she nearly tripped over David. The pirate minion darted past them and dove to catch the waist of his beloved, just yards down the beach of this sheltered cove.

"Valerie! I ain't gonna leave you alone anymore! We'll be together forever!"

Tiredness forgotten, Rei instantly started smiling, watching avidly the romantic scene playing out before her.

Valerie, meantime, had knelt down. "David, my love! You must go back to your ship."

Looking up with soulful eyes, he protested, "But if I quit bein' a pirate, we can be together! My heart's all set to give it up for you!"

"No, you can't! Go back to your ship. You used to talk about how you wanted to see the world. Don't you remember saying that when we were kids?"

Getting up, David avoided Valerie's gaze by brushing sand off his trousers. "I remember. But I was too young to know any better."

"'I'll bring back sea monster treasure!' 'I'll beat up all the monsters so they won't attack Val!'" she reminded, mimicking the piping voice her mate must have had when they were still young.

David stopped brushing sand off and looked straight at Valerie. "I did say that," he admitted, "but you said somethin' about an egg!"

Flowers ruffled by the wind, Valerie gave him a sad smile. "No, I was talking about laying an egg sometime in the future. Aren't I silly? I'm only _dreaming_ about having an egg."

"Valerie…"

Her expression firmed. "Now go! I'm going to hate you if you don't! Go back to your ship!"

Hesitantly, David started walking back towards Rei and Elazul, still standing by the exit of the cave. Almost halfway there, he turned around. "Valerie…I…I'll come back to you! Ten years later…No, even a _hundred_ years later…I'll come back as a cap'n, with a hundred penguins under my wing!" he declared, chest puffing. "Don't forget this, it's a vow to you! Aye, I'll be back when all monsters are gone from every sea! So long, love!" In a spray of sand, he dashed between Rei and Elazul and was gone.

Valerie's firm expression slipped, then vanished, leaving that sad smile from before. "David…" she sighed. "I won't be able to live with a pirate…I'll hatch the egg myself. That's what's best for our happiness."

Elazul made an irritated noise and walked out and around the rocks to the thin slice of beach leading east. He waited for a about a minute, and then Rei came dashing around the corner, grinning. "Happy, now?" he asked her.

"Uh-huh! That was so cute!"

Elazul glowered. "I'm not speaking to you."

Rei didn't notice, chattering to him about how much fun that was, that she hoped David managed to live up to his vow, and that a talking pink crab back there had said that they'd squashed about twenty-eight crabs during their trip, all while rebinding the slash on his arm. Her companion swore to himself that he would never, even with the Goddess' help, understand this woman.

———

The cottage was quiet in the fading, late afternoon summer heat when a tired knife-fighter at last returned to the place known as Haven's Tree Cottage. "I'm hoo-oome!" Rei called as she vaulted her front gate, giving her Sproutling a pat on its leafy head as two pink-topped cannonballs tore around the corner from the direction of the monster barn.

"Master Rei!" was the joyful yell as Rei was thoroughly glomped upon by the two Elven children. "How was the trip?" Lisa queried, peering up at relaxed green eyes.

"Fine, fine," their teacher replied, ruffling their hair after she dislodged them from her waist. "I bought a very nice lamp from the place Meimei recommended, and don't let me forget to shove Xan into the pond behind the workshops when he gets around to dropping by. It's all his fault I was gone so long."

"You were gone a whole whopping five days," Bud told her grumpily. "Only an extra day out. Big deal. Wasn't like we missed you or anything," he added in a self-conscious mutter.

"Missed you, too, boyo," Rei grinned, reaching out and gently poking his forehead with one finger. "Now, did those two eggs I caught while I was gone hatch?"

Lisa took her teacher's hand and led the sprite down the path to the barn, where Rei was immediately set on by two very happy pet monsters. It took a minute or two for the fighter to get loose from Tsuta's multi-coiled hug, and she nearly tripped over the Rabite _chirring_ on her feet, but she got inside the barn with no other trouble. Snoozing in one of the 'dry' pens was a shaggy calf with tiny horns budding by long, floppy ears; one of the 'wet'—meaning, one that was built like a miniature pond—pens held a curious pair of eyes attached to a body covered in pink scales and violet-tipped spines.

_Burble?_ came from the second pen, the head-sized little Iffish swimming out into air to nose interestedly at pink-clad arms. _Glub!_

The noise woke the young Gray Ox in the first pen, who _mooed_ shyly at this new person in its world. Giving the Iffish a brief tickle behind the gill-spines—earning herself a happy little _burble_ in the process—Rei ambled over to the calf to say hello. All splayed feet and big eyes, the calf was quickly melting under an expert scratching in the knot of hair right between its ears.

"Two fine, sweet little beasties," Rei declared cheerfully. "Who wants which?"

Bud and Lisa blinked. "Huh?"

"I already have two pet monsters who look to me. Having four would just be greedy," Rei informed her students in mock-sternness. She repeated patiently, "Who wants which?"

Glances were exchanged. Pink hair tilted as eyes spoke to eyes in silent discussion. After a few moments, Bud stepped over to the Ox and answered, "I'll take this little guy. Lisa wants the Iffish."

Rei clapped him on the shoulder and grinned. "All right, but remember, they're just babies, and you've undoubtedly found out that babies need lots of care." She sobered, warning them, "If either of you doesn't take care of your new companion, then I'm going to have Jennifer buy the youngling. No one goes neglected here."

"Yes, Master Rei."

"Good. You two pick out names for your younglings, if you haven't already. I'm going to go talk to Trent and visit Lil' Cactus before I get dinner started." Rei gave her charges (those with two legs, four, or none) one last pat and vanished into the orchard's green shadows.

For a moment, Bud and Lisa stood in the doorway of the barn, the baby Ox leaning his head against Bud's shoulder as the boy absently petted his soft nose. Lisa's Iffish floated around the corral, nosing at anything and everything that looking even vaguely interesting.

Bud broke the silence, commenting in a perplexed voice, "Wow. Whatever she did, it sure worked. I've never seen her this cheerful." Lisa nodded her agreement and went to go fish out her pet from a berry patch that was encroaching on one corner of the enclosed yard.

———

Yaay, fluff! And for those of you who didn't know but still care, if you want to unlock the Treasure Map adventure with the pirates, you have to squish at least twenty-five crabs. I think. More is better, anyway. I have so much fun stepping on those things because of that really satisfying crunch they make when you do!

Anyway, on to the next chapter!


	9. Wisdoms, Looking Glass Tower

Look, a double-bonus! An extra chapter _and_ it's longer!

———

The next morning Rei emerged from the monster barn covered in Rabite fluff and straw, Nip bouncing out behind her and into the corral, his newly-brushed coat clean and shining. Uttering the occasional sneeze, the knife-fighter gave Tsuta, busy sunning himself by the open gate, a brief stroking on her way into the house. Fuzzbucket, the little Ox, was playing a game of 'chase-me-catch-me' with Chrysoberyl (Chryso, for short), Lisa's baby Iffish.

Rei grinned, watching them until she turned the corner that led to the front door. Sneezing again, she trotted inside and found Lisa busily sweeping the floor with the broom she'd inherited from the twins' father. "Morning, Lisa. Where's Bud?"

"Poking around your library," the young Elf replied, pausing in her battle against dust. "I think he's still hoping to find some ancient tome of giant spells or something."

Rei snorted her amusement, knowing perfectly well that there was nothing in that room but history books and bard-tales from all over the world. Her parents had started it, Xan had picked up where they'd left off, and she'd taken over when Xan had moved out. She knew every book like an old friend; Bud wasn't going to find a single spell-book of _any_ sort in there no matter how hard he looked.

She kept her spell-books in the hidden cubby in the wall above her pillow. Although she wouldn't call them 'spell-books' per say, Rei mused as she headed for the bathroom to clean up. There weren't any actual spells in them, they were more like helpful guides on how to make enchanted instruments, weapons, and armor.

Brushing out her hair, Rei made a face at herself in the mirror, thinking of a small, thin, dusty, leather-bound tome that now huddled behind the rest of the books in the hidden cubby. That one _did_ have spells, and she had warded the hiding-place from any hands buts hers for that reason.

She was good at wards, the ability no doubt stemming from her skills with crafting magical items, skills that she vaguely remembered her mother having. What small sign of her work there was disguised by the presence of her wisteria lamp from Monique in Lumina. It sat on the tiny shelf set into the wall, put there for reading in bed.

The book was, undoubtedly, the one that Mephianse had stolen, given that Rei had found it almost completely buried in the sand his students had moved while excavating that weird cannon-thingie. Her foot had bumped into it during the fireworks, and she'd stuffed it into her bag while everyone else was paying total attention to the sky.

She felt a pang of guilt for having effectively stolen something that had already been stolen, but that was the point, right? It had already been swiped from the Academy's library, so it wasn't safe there. It, and the spells it contained, was safer in her hands because she didn't practice magic outside of wards and item-crafting. She'd already read through the book last night after her apprentices had gone to bed and hadn't found a single spell that she herself could use.

Sighing, Rei assuaged her guilt by telling herself she owed Kathinja a favor, and exited the bathroom, fur- and straw-free.

Bud now sat at the big table, a history book in front of him and a thoughtful look on his face as he turned pages. He looked up at his teacher when she walked into his line of sight, and whatever he'd been thinking about appeared to click. "I studied magic at the Academy," he told Rei in uncanny echo of her thoughts. "I've heard of the Seven Wisdoms of Mana. Except one died, so now there are six. I sure would like to meet them someday."

Leaning over, Rei found that the book Bud was reading was the one on the Wisdoms, the book she'd remembered when she'd met Toté. She found herself grinning, remembering the language Elazul had used when she'd hauled him over the cliff-edge. It had been darned creative.

Bud was still mulling something over as he said aloud, "I wonder where they are…?" Rei rolled her eyes, seeing it coming when Bud looked back up at her and demanded in his more normal, brash tone that she take him on a search for them.

Rei ruffled his hair. "Okay, but I only know where two of them are right now. And I'll only take you with the stipulation that when I find myself some good-sized trouble that I think you two can handle, Lisa goes with me. I'm not going to play favorites."

The Elf-boy didn't care; he leaped out of the chair and ran upstairs with a cheer of, "Now you're talkin'!"

Rei watched him go, then turned back to Lisa. "You gonna be okay with this? Because I can take you, too."

Her second apprentice only gave her a sunny smile and shook her head, making her ponytail bounce. "No, it's okay, Master Rei. Someone has to keep an eye on things here while you're gone. This way you can give Bud some extra lessoning and see if you can't get him over that block he has with protection spells."

"Good idea," Rei agreed. She collected the Wisdoms book that Bud had been looking at and plunked it onto her study's desk, figuring she'd put it back later when she got around to reorganizing the shelves. Then she went upstairs to help Bud pack for their brief trip.

———

Bud scampered ahead of her on Luon Highway, seemingly unconcerned that they kept finding monsters to ambush them every hundred feet or so. He'd grumbled about how his adventure wasn't going to last more than a day, but Rei had tuned him out and kept an eye on Fuzzbucket.

The young Gray Ox ambled along behind them, seemingly unconcerned with the day's heat thanks to his thick coat. The knife-fighter quirked a smile at the little beast, then turned back to her chattering student.

"Easy, easy, Bud," she laughed, waving a hand at him. "Slow down! I can't understand half of what you're saying."

"That's 'cause you weren't listening!" he accused, winning himself a wry grin from his teacher.

"Not true. I was checking on your pet monster." Bud informed her in no uncertain terms that _he_ was keeping a perfectly good eye on the calf, then scampered ahead again. Rei simply rolled her eyes, patted Fuzzbucket on the head, and followed after her student at a much more leisurely pace.

They made it to Gaeus within two hours of leaving home, and Rei felt herself smiling again at the gravely voice that filled the air; the heavy-jawed, dog-like face set into the hillside had that affect on people. "Come closer, my children," greeted the Wisdom, and the two clambered onto the stone claw-like hand.

"Good morning, Gaeus!" Rei chirped.

"Good morning," rumbled the hillside. "Who is this?"

"I'm Bud," her student introduced himself. "I came to listen to the Wisdoms to become a great wizard!"

Gaeus smiled. "Hello, Bud. There was a great mage named Halciet long, long ago. His name is not mentioned in history, but he was much larger than me in many ways."

"Thanks, Gaeus!"

With a grating rumble, the stone paw lowered them back down to the ground. "Come again, my children," the Wisdom bade kindly, and then—in a blink—went to sleep. Rei smiled, shook her head, and ushered Bud back the way they'd come.

———

It was late afternoon when master and student stepped out onto the rock promontory where Toté stood, gazing out over the lake. "Hello, Grandfather Toté," Rei called, and the turtle-man turned around with a smile, eyes almost disappearing in a fan of wrinkles.

"Hello, young'un!" came the creaky reply. "Back again so soon?"

Rei ruffled Bud's hair in affection. "I'm escorting my student on a quest of his. Bud?"

The young elf walked forward a few steps, then looked shyly back at his teacher, uncertain about this grandfatherly creature in a way that Gaeus hadn't made him. Rei made a shooing gesture, and Bud took a breath. He repeated the introduction he'd given to Gaeus, then stood there scuffing his feet.

Toté's smile got bigger, but no less kind, and he ran a flipper-hand over his worn scarf as he looked over the young Elf. "Hello, Bud," Toté said in his whispery voice. "You don't need to listen to Wisdoms to become a great mage. The grass, water, rocks and wind…Listen to what _they_ say."

Bud fidgeted, then thanked the Wisdom with more confidence before he trotted back to his teacher. Rei waved goodbye to the elderly turtle, then led the way back for home.

———

There was a lamp left in the window that night when the trio of adventurers got back home. Bud was a limp doll on Rei's back, worn out from all the unaccustomed traveling. Fuzzbucket was tired, too, but he was in better shape since _he_ hadn't been the one running around like a hyperactive squirrel.

The knife-fighter left their packs by the front door as she led the Gray Ox calf around to the corral and left him snuggling into a bed of straw, his feed bucket refilled and water in his trough. Then she carried her still-sleeping apprentice into the house, easily juggling their packs inside with the boy limp on her back. Lisa had already gone to bed; the only light downstairs was the lamp she'd set in the window and the fire burning in the hearth.

It was only a matter of minutes before cat-footed Rei had tucked the sleeping Bud into his bed upstairs; a few more to find a certain book in her library and to curl up in the rocking chair by the hearth. Gaeus had said that a mage named Halciet hadn't been named in history, but apparently he hadn't heard of _The Mana Wars_ by Fenna Grenston.

In a chapter called 'The Seventh Moon', the book described how Halciet had stood against the mage Anuella, daughter to the creator of the weapon known as the Eye of Flame, Anise. The Seventh Moon was said to be a Mana stone of great power, and the chapter went on to describe how the stone was not only the demise of Anise, but the reason that the Jumi had shut off their ability to cry.

Rei sat in the half-light for a long time after that, gazing thoughtfully into the fire that was constantly burning in her hearth, letting her mind wander. It turned over what she'd read a few times, examining the information with the care she used in tempering weapons. It left that for thinking about Elazul and Pearl…and Rubens. A race destroyed for the sake of a stone no one was sure even existed. She turned her mind from that before guilt and sorrow rose again.

Her thoughts came to center on the fire, remembering vaguely the day her parents had lit it, and how high it used to burn. They'd enchanted the hearth so that the fire would burn no matter what, and would continue to do so for as long as her family lived. It was how, when a nun from Gato Grottoes had come to tell them about their parents, she and Xan had been able to face the woman and tell her that they already knew their parents weren't coming home again. The fire had been burning at half-strength for more than a day before the nun had come.

That was why she was never worried about Xan. So long as her fire crackled merrily in the hearth, her brother was fine. A sardonic smile twisted at her mouth. Or at the very least, not dead, she amended to herself.

Lost in her thoughts, she never noticed the pair of cat-like amethyst eyes that watched her from the top step for a little while, then disappeared into the children's bedroom.

——————————————

Two weeks passed in relative quiet, if one didn't count the explosion from a mixture Bud had half-remembered from his Academy classes that left him without eyebrows for several days. One day Rei sat on her front porch while the late-summer sun liberally poured a lazy afternoon on the world below, a piece of grass between her lips and cicada-song in her ears. Xan had written again, telling her that he'd be home in a couple of months and would she pretty please feed him before he went and poisoned himself?

She'd written him back, promising him a good meal and that his pet monsters and cactus were being taken care of, and his orchard-tree said hello.

Bud was working out in the orchard, Fuzzbucket his large, fuzzy shadow—and a threat to fresh-picked produce—while the sounds of Lisa training Chryso could easily be heard over the insect-song. Her resident Sproutling was soaking up the sunlight on the front walk while it sang itself a tuneless little ditty that counter-pointed the cicadas. Everything was quiet, peaceful.

Rei was about to go nuts.

Peace was fine; she liked peace. In small doses, liberally scattered between stretches of adventure and traveling.

The knife-fighter sighed and supposed that itchy feet were an inherited issue from her unknown grandparents, because her whole darn family had them. Then she brightened, remembering that she'd promised Monique over in Lumina that she'd come by to pick up lamps to sell in nearby Domina. Anticipation lightening her mood, she picked herself up and trotted into the cottage to pack.

She came out mere minutes later, pack shouldered and stuffed with a few changes of clothes and her bedroll. A sharp whistle summoned her apprentices from their tasks, pet monsters in tow. "What's up, Master Rei?" Bud asked when he noticed her traveling kit. "Where're you going?"

"I promised a friend in Lumina that I'd sell some of her lamps in town, so I'm going to go pick them up," Rei told him as she checked her knives and her armbands. "I'll be back in a few days, and I want you two to make one instrument each while I'm gone, all right? And Bud, no potion-making without Lisa to keep an eye on you."

"That's not fair!" growled the young Elf boy, his sister giggling behind her hand.

"Sure it's fair," their teacher retorted sweetly. "Lisa hasn't lost her eyebrows yet, so I have to assume she can keep you on track. I'll see you later!" And without giving her students another chance to speak, Rei vaulted over the front gate and loped down the road.

Bud muttered a few words that he never spoke around Rei and crossed his arms over his chest. "She hardly ever takes us with her!" he complained to Lisa. "You'd think she was avoiding us!"

"Nah," the Elf-girl giggled. "Master Rei's just got a bad case of wandering feet. I'm surprised she went this long without taking a trip."

Bud growled a little more, but at last relented with, "I guess you're right. Everyone in town says the Venstrys were always adventuring. I just wish she'd take us with her more."

Lisa tugged on her brother's ear affectionately and starting shooing Chryso back to the monster corral. "I'm sure she will when we're a little older. She's promised that she'll start teaching us regular weapons soon, remember? She wouldn't do that if she wasn't planning on more trips for us."

Bud suddenly grinned. "Hey, you're right!" And he headed back for the orchard with a cheerful tune.

———

Nearly a day and a half of walking later, Rei was scratching her head at the sight of a building rising tall against the deep, constantly-purple sky of the Twilight Lands. She _thought_ she'd been going the right way to Lumina, but apparently not. The knife-fighter firmly squashed a niggling thought that maybe Elazul had been right when he'd said she was horrible with directions. She'd gotten to Lumina just fine the first time, hadn't she?

Her hunter's lope had her within the long shadow of the abandoned tower in less than another hour, lonely mage-lights glowing orange in the gathering darkness. Here, twilight lay even deeper than in Lumina, and Rei felt a wrench of Mana energies twisted out of alignment the moment that long shadow fell on her.

The knife-fighter's instincts were screeching at her to turn right back the hell around and get while the getting was good, but unfortunately her curiosity won out when she spotted a pale-clad figure standing at the iron-wrought gates. They were crowned with wickedly-smiling ravens, forever frozen with wings spread for flight. Closer inspection revealed the person to be…Pearl?

Rei immediately started looking around for the ever-present chocobo-down-to-last-chick Knight of hers, approaching the Jumi girl on cat-quiet feet. Pearl never noticed her, distracted by those glowing windows.

"Leires…" muttered Pearl to herself, sounding hesitant. She took a step back, then two…and bumped into a concerned Rei, who had discovered nary a sign of Elazul at all. "Aaaa!"

"Aren't we jumpy," commented the knife-fighter dryly when Pearl jumped and whirled. She had one of her dust-gold eyebrows raised for good measure. "Hiya, kitten."

"Rei!" gasped the Jumi girl, hand flat over her core. "You scared me!"

"People say I'm too quiet for my own good sometimes," Rei agreed comfortably, "but you weren't exactly paying loads of attention to what's around you."

Pearl blushed. "I'm sorry…I get carried away in my own thoughts…" She smiled sweetly at the knife-fighter, remembering something. "Thanks for finding me in the cave, but I've been separated from Elazul again…"

"I'd noticed." Rei had let her tone go dry, but her half-smile hadn't faded a hair. "Why here? The Mana flows are making my teeth ache."

Pearl turned back to the tower, the light from the windows licking at her dress and coat like soft flame. "I feel like the tower is calling me…" she replied in a dreamy voice. "I have to go…"

Rei had a feeling that the way the silly girl kept trailing off was going to drive her to swat Pearl before they reached the top floor, but all she said was, "So I'll go with you. Elazul would skin me if he found out I'd let you go in alone. Besides," she added cheerfully when Pearl's face fell at the mention of her knight, "I hear there's plenty of monsters in there that have too much treasure for their own good in there. I might as well go and empty whatever they use instead of pockets."

That won her a shy giggle. "Thank you, Rei…"

Waving her hand to show that it's nothing, Rei tossed back her hair to get it out of her face and sauntered forward and up the overgrown path. Pearl kept close to her heels, eyes wide as they stepped through one of two doorways, arm-guards protecting Rei's flesh as she knocked aside pieces of rotting wood that still hung in ghostly memory of said door.

There were two ways to go; Rei ignored the right path and chose the left without hesitation, going around a corner and into what would be the first of many monster ambushes on their way to the top floor. Golden blades flashed like eyes in the magical torchlight, a deadly barrier between the frightened Pearl and a trio of bloodsucking…well, Bloodsuckers. The bat-like creatures fell quickly against those Vizel gold fangs, leaving Rei not even breathing hard.

"Pesky buggers," she growled under her breath. "Trying to munch me without so much as a by-your-leave." She turned her head to look back at a relieved Pearl and grinned. "Well, come on, kitten. You aren't going to see much back there."

With a startled squeak, Pearl ran to catch up.

———

Leires, Rei quickly discovered, was half abandoned hallways, and half irritatingly-long staircases that twisted around the outside of the building, each one ending in a doorway lit by those eternally-burning torches. Stranger still was the unshakable feeling that she'd been here before and had walked the steps time after time. When she found herself looking for small things, like cracks or chipped stones, and finding them, she began to get thoroughly creeped out. This was worse than the one morning over a month ago when she'd woken with no memory of who or where or what she was.

Pearl seemed grateful, though, as she followed her unexpected guide up to the fifth floor. When they immediately took a left down a shadowed corridor instead of going straight like they'd done for the last three floors, she blinked but didn't argue.

Surprise was writ clear in large green eyes when a once-elegant staircase taking up the whole end of the farther piece of corridor appeared through the half-gloom. "Rei…" Pearl breathed, "How did you know this was here?"

For once, the knife-fighter wore an emotion other than amusement or fierce protection. Unease. "I just knew," she replied after testing the first step and beginning to climb. "It's like I've spent years here, enough to know every twist and turning. There's something on the eighth floor that we're going to; it's the only way to get to the tenth and eleventh floors. I just can't remember what."

More Bloodsuckers, a half-dozen Dainslaif, a handful of Chess Knights and Dark Stalkers later, the pair came to the monster-free eighth floor and found a pair of doors made of plain hammered iron. Rei had been muttering uncomplimentary things about monster bats, swords that had no right to go dancing around in the air to hack at people, living chess pieces, and ghostly knights for the last several minutes and didn't quit even as she stalked up to the doors and booted them open.

Inside was a plain stone room with a wall decoration or two, and a double-pyramid crystal that hung, blue and glowing, over a narrow pedestal. Rei didn't hesitate to walk over and press her fingertips delicately to the surface of the floating stone. "Going up," she murmured under her breath.

Pearl made another squeak when the whole room shook around them, stone grinding dust loose to make her cough. Rei blinked her eyes clear and gave her companion a sheepish smile. "Sorry. I didn't know it was going to rattle everything that bad."

"You're starting to worry me…"

"Only starting?" Rei snorted as she led the way back out to an entirely new floor equally empty of monsters as the last. "Kitten, I started _scaring_ me about six floors back. Come on; last floor's this way."

And so it was, up one more flight of stone stairs. When they rounded a corner and came into view of a massive set of double-doors, Rei paused to let herself breathe. The half-memories were nearly drowning her here, with flickers of this place filled with mages that refused to listen to somebody she once was, who thought that Mana energy shouldn't be hoarded the way the mages were doing.

Pearl took several steps forward, gaze lost into the distance past the door. "The room of fate lies beyond the door," she told no one in particular. "Everyone must face their past. I…I'm sorry, Rei…" she added, turning a clear gaze to her friend. "Run if it gets dangerous…"

Rei returned her gaze with a flat look of challenge. Pearl's clear speech had shaken some of the past loose, enough for her to know when she was. "And the rest of the bloody tower isn't."

The Jumi girl had the grace to look embarrassed. "I suppose it is…" And the two went through the doors.

Inside, the walls had a few boxes of rotted materials and weapons leaning against them, the left wall taken up with a massive golden throne whose back rose in a curve-edged scallop shell twice the height of Rei. In the middle of the chamber's floor was a design similar to a brightly-painted compass rose, but here the paint was gold and jewels.

Just on the other side of that emblem was a woman, slumped as though tired beyond belief or in defeat. She was dressed in similar clothing to Pearl; but in addition to coat-sleeves, a mantle was slung across her shoulders made of the same pattern as Pearl's skirt. The stranger wore heels instead of slippers, but the pearl decoration was the same, if black instead of white. Almost hidden under long, curly brown hair was a pearly decoration set into her forehead; that tumble of curls was confined into a single ponytail down the woman's back. In the same place as Pearl's core, the other's stone gleamed opalescent black.

Pearl showed no hesitation, approaching the stranger with, "You're the guard?" Rei lunged to pull her friend back but missed, determination bringing Pearl ever closer. "Please…tell me. I want to know my own past…"

In reply, a heavily-gloved hand reached out, palm out, and a glassy green stare caught the guardian in its grasp. Pearl screamed when magic grabbed her and flung her, sliding, into the floor-level seat of the throne. The stranger fixed stares with Rei, then vanished in a swirl of dark mist.

Pearl managed to get to her feet just as an adrenaline-pumped knife-fighter ran over to her…then both stared as the far corner of the room swam with that same mist, exploding outwards into a centaur knight more than four times Rei's height at the shoulder.

"Back up!" Rei yelled, flinging herself into the fight with only Pearl's safety in mind. Sparks flared and died in the shadows of the room as knife bit into halberd blade and slid away. Grunts echoed as knives bit deep into flank and side; howls rang when a soaring leap brought the agile sprite into range to stab through the armor's chinks at shoulder and neck.

Pearl cried out in dismay when a lucky strike sent Rei flying clear across the room to smack into the wall by the door. Rei snarled when her enemy reared, forehooves pawing the air, and leaped high into the shadows concealing the roof of the chamber. The knife fighter raced over to her friend and snatched her up, sprinting to another corner with hot green eyes pinned on the small blot of moving darkness visible on the floor.

A desperate twist and roll brought them clear of the earth-shaking landing of the centaur; Rei was up and attacking again before Pearl could even comprehend how close they'd come to getting flattened.

Battle-cries mixed with yells and plenty of swearing on Rei's part that detailed the creature's dubious parentage and unfortunate lack of intelligence in language that made Pearl's ears burn. It was several long minutes and at least two more deadly leaps before the centaur screamed and disappeared in another cloud of that black mist.

Rei tiredly picked up the several large crystals that the monster had dropped, still possessing the wit to make Pearl claim at least one. Somehow, though the reasoning escaped her, Rei knew that the crystals made you stronger. Irritation made her keep the two big coins that had dropped. Pearl didn't object.

Instead, when the two met in the middle of the floor, Rei's hand bloody where it covered a particularly nasty slash above an arm-cuff, Pearl only smiled in gratitude that her friend was alive. There had been several moments when the monster had nearly gotten a fatal blow in.

"You okay, right?" panted Rei, looking Pearl over before casting around for the knife she'd had to drop when her injured arm had gone numb.

Pearl nodded several times, shaky in relief. "I was so scared…" she confessed, then trailed off when her core chimed and a bright flash of light sang from it. "Huh? My core…"

"Hey, 'Lazul," Rei greeted tiredly to the man just stalking in. "You missed all the fun."

Elazul ignored her, all his attention for "Pearl!"

The object of his attention returned a weak smile. "Elazul…"

"I thought I told you not to wander around!" he scolded, eyes searching for any injury as he walked up to his charge.

If Jumi could cry, Pearl would undoubtedly have them beginning to trickle from her eyes as she began protesting, "I'm sorry…If I try to remember something…"

Elazul rested his forehead on her shoulder a moment, not bothering to hide his exasperation and overwhelming relief at finding her unhurt, then looked at the fighter standing with blood oozing between her fingers. "Thanks again," he said brusquely, but with real feeling, and took Pearl by the shoulder. "Let's go!"

Pearl ducked loose from his hand and backed up, crying without tears in frustration. "I feel like I can…" she hiccupped, "Please, help me…Please…" Green was fixed solidly on blue as Pearl begged, "Elazul, please…Elazul…"

Her knight deflated, utterly incapable of defending himself against such a beseeching look. He looked over at Rei, who stared back impassively over the cork clenched between her teeth. An empty vial was cradled in her fingers over her arm, wound hissing and sealing shut. The silence stretched, tight as a harp-string… "…I understand," he sighed at last, resigned. To Rei, he bade her to take Pearl back down to the bottom of the tower. He walked over to whisper into her ear, "If anything happens to her, I will kill you. Understand?"

Rei looked into hard blue eyes and smirked. She whispered back, "'Lazul, if anything happens to her, something will have already killed me. So there."

Her friend glared at her for joking at a time like this, then he turned and headed for the door, tossing over his shoulder, "I'll clean up the little trash. Don't let Pearl get in over her head."

"Got it, boss-man," Rei replied with far more cheer than she felt and saluted with a cleaned hand. A rag that had been clean when she'd pulled it from her pack now lay in a bloody crumpled heap on the ground; here, Rei didn't worry about monsters following her scent. More than half didn't have the nose for scent-trailing.

After Elazul had gone, Rei turned to find Pearl blushing furiously from where she stood, still by the emblem in the ground. "Pearl?"

"Thank you for helping me."

Rei felt herself cheer up a little more despite the prospect of having to go down all those damned stairs again. "Ah, it's nothing, kitten. 'Sides, with all the treasure we've been getting, I'll be able to buy plenty of materials for forging. I'm all patched up, so let's get going."

Pearl's smile was worth the trouble, Rei decided as they left the room with the empty, dusty throne.

———

"—eeeeeek!" Ka-thud!

"Pearl, do you _have_ to screech in my ear every time we do that?"

"Can't we just take the stairs like _normal_ people!?"

Rei laughed, setting Pearl on her feet and shaking out legs tingling from the landing. Rei had, out of curiosity, looked through a hole in the outer railing lining one of the large balconies on almost every floor and discovered that each balcony stuck out farther than the others the farther down one went. Nothing would do, then, but to have Rei snag Pearl and jump down one or two floors at a time, allowing them to bypass a majority of the monsters that were still lurking despite Elazul's 'clean-up'.

Pearl, obviously, was less than pleased.

Rei, on the other hand, enjoyed the sensation of free-fall despite her friend shrieking in her ear and the death-grip around her neck. Still, she was annoyed that Elazul had actually left any monsters, since in _her_ opinion all the beasties around here (not counting that damned centaur-thing) were 'little trash'. She was going to have a few words with him the next time she ran into him.

And they weren't going to be, 'Goddess bless'.

It took far less time to go down than up, and twenty minutes after the battle upstairs, Rei and Pearl were walking through the first-floor hallway, torch-light dancing across their bodies. Rei led the way to the doorway they'd come through—and then a quiet, sharp 'plap' came from behind them.

Pearl looked back. "What was that?" Trotting to the square of white folded paper, Rei on her heels, Pearl broke open the wax seal, only to drop the whole thing as if it had suddenly sprouted fangs. "A note!? The jewel hunter!"

Laughter came from above, and a shadow dropped into sight with the help of a rope. "I've wanted to meet you!" Sandra told the Jumi girl now firmly behind a bristling Rei.

"And I've wanted to see you again, murderer!" Rei snapped back, every inch of her trembling in remembered fury. "I've got a score to settle with you!" Pearl whimpered in fear behind her friend, fingers clutching violet cloth in silent plea.

Sandra ignored the knife-fighter, smirking at the Jumi girl cowering at Rei's back. "Your core is mine!" she declared, and flung a glittering stone into the air. "Judge the clod that has forgotten its sparkle! Go! Jewel Beast!"

In a spray of light, the shape of a monster formed out of nothing. A round, faceted stone of blue-gray that pointed at both ends formed the main body; the four legs were a metal spider's. And topping a long flexible neck made of roundish stones was a mouth with four prongs perfect for stabbing. A long spike that could retract down the throat served as a tongue.

Rei immediately shoved Pearl back and once more threw herself into a fight. Her yell of fury rang off ceiling and walls while Sandra stood where she'd landed, blocking the only way out.

It didn't take long for Rei to figure out the tactics of the monster that Sandra had summoned; it favored charges and stabbing motions, biting if the opportunity presented itself. Her wary circling gave it the chance to show off a special trick—its 'teeth' could sink into the ground, giving it the leverage needed to balance on its neck and use its legs as a stone-crunching drill.

It took only a little longer for Rei to slash the thing to pieces, rage lending her greater strength. Pearl had to keep moving around to avoid the pieces that were sheared off by knives sharp enough to cut the winds.

In a space measured in less than a handful of minutes, the Jewel Beast broke apart with an ear-splitting screech, leaving Rei to face Sandra with knives gleaming and ready.

Sandra looked over the fighter casually, then smirked at Pearl again. "Quite a partner you have, Pearl."

Somewhere, Pearl found the courage to step up beside Rei. "Why…?" she asked after a moment or two. "Why do you hunt us? How terrible!"

That smirk that made Rei's blood boil slipped, leaving seriousness behind. "Listen to your core…" countered Sandra, making the others look at her in confusion.

Pearl said it first. "Huh?"

Sandra only shrugged and brought out that grappling hook of hers again. "We'll meet again. Goodnight, Pearl." Then she was gone. Rei slammed her knives back into their sheaths and swore the air rainbow colors, only to break off at the stricken look Pearl wore.

"……Am I going to die?" Pearl asked no one, staring at where Sandra had stood, taking a step or two closer. "A guardian without a knight is a sitting duck. Elazul is looking for others…And if that Jumi is a guardian…" Her face grew pale as she followed that line of thought.

Personally, Rei thought that Elazul would stay with Pearl even if it killed him and to the underworld with anyone else if she was threatened, but the knife-fighter couldn't speak civilly just yet. She was still wrestling to keep her rage contained.

"…And I'll be all alone…" breathed Pearl, having continued with her highly unlikely train of thought. "I hope he never finds one." She gave Rei a sad smile and added, "I have to go. Elazul is waiting…I'll get yelled at again. Thank you, Rei. You saved me again."

With care not to set off hair-trigger reflexes, the Jumi girl gave her friend a hug and slipped something into her pack. "This is for you. Take care."

Rei made incoherent noises that were supposed to be 'Now wait a Shade-damned minute!' or possibly 'I'll strangle Elazul if he yells'. Unfortunately her temper was proving rather difficult to leash again and adrenaline had messed up everything but her fighting abilities. Pearl was gone before Rei could so much as get her feet to move.

_Thoroughly_ pissed off and unhappy at the world in general, Rei turned around and took her temper out on the Mana-enforced wall behind her. If she hadn't, she undoubtedly would have taken it out on the remaining inhabitants of Leires, and she would have hated herself for it when she'd calmed down.

After leaving several long scores in the stone of the wall, Rei stalked out of the tower, determined to get herself to Lumina come fire or flood.

———

A week later Rei trudged home, her share of the lamp sales firmly resting in her pouch. She hadn't even gotten home to Domina before the near-dozen lamps, safely packed in pannier baskets and straw, had sold completely out. Rei had a feeling that Monique's shop was going to get a _lot_ busier in the coming months.

In the meantime, she hailed the sight of her front door with a thankful cry of, "Hark! I spy myself a haven!" and jumped the gate with some of her normal energy.

Matched shouts of 'Master Rei!' came from two different directions, one Elf-child tearing down the path from behind the house and one bursting out the front door. Grinning tiredly, Rei caught them both in a hug and ruffled their hair afterwards.

"Yeah, I'm home," she sighed, her students' antics bringing a smile to her lips. "I missed you two. Anything happen while I was gone?" She made a show of eyeing the house. "Everything _looks_ like it's still standing."

Bud scowled, Lisa giggled. "It's all still here," the girl reassured her teacher. "Did you have fun?"

"I had some," their teacher admitted as they began walking into their home. "I'll give you the full details later. Right now, all I want is something to eat, a bath, and my bed!"

———

I really don't like those Jewel Beasts. They're very annoying.


	10. Summer Cold, Drowned Dreams

Sorry this is a little bit late this time. I kept hoping for just _one more_ review, but I'll be happy with the nice pile I got. Thank you and double thank you to everyone who reviewed both chapters from last post! In the meantime, I finally got to be the corrupter instead of the corruptee, and got my best friend DragonSeer hooked on the game—and most especially, on a certain yummy Jumi Knight. 'n,.,n' Being evil is so much fun. Just don't be surprised if some of the later chapters come in fits and bursts, since I'm letting her borrow it off and on.

**Tiamat42:** Those two are ridiculously fun to write together. And I loved your latest chapter in _Descent_. Ren's really giving Sandra a headache. (I'm thinking of cosplaying her one of these days.) As for Elazul's reaction to finding out about the whole jumping-off-balconies thing, Rei is more than likely going to be keeping her mouth shut on the subject. She doesn't have that much of a death-wish. n,.,n!

I've discovered that my two least favorite parts of the game have to be Drakonis' lair and those damned Mindas Ruins. Stupid Flowering key-puzzles. Stupid Niccolo. Oh, and stupid pirate-ship sea-chart adventure idiocy.

**Starlight's Delight:** Hurrah, crab-crushing. Best part of that whole area! And, well…I sort of cheated, when it came to Leires the first time. I had the strategy guide. I don't have it anymore, it was a borrowed copy, but it was definitely useful. Gamefaqsdotcom is now my main resource for details like that. The script is available at Etanseldotnet, and I thank them every time I think of how much time I save by not needing to write everything down as I go. But they're missing one quest, and I can't remember which one it is.

Feather-thing. Yes, please do explain? It's been bothering me.

**hUeS -of- h a z e l: **You find out how Xan reacts next chapter, if I remember the count correctly.

**Zemratsu: **Just don't laugh yourself to death, okay? This little corner of the site is empty enough as it is. n,.,n I like Leires, it's nifty once you know the way. And the balconies are just plain fun. I chose 'master' since that's what Bud and Lisa call her in-game, which was probably 'sensei' or 'shishou' in the original Japanese. This incarnation uses knives; I've played through enough to learn every tech for every weapon (ohmigawd Phoenix and Dragon, wa-hoo!) and prefer them or the gloves. Specific answers: (1) Teapo is later, as described in my oneshot 'More Than a Scene'. Just wait. (2) She uses instruments when she doesn't or can't use her knives, for whatever reason. She just prefers hand-to-hand. (3) New characters? OCs? No, probably not.

**Shadow's Rage:** _—dramatic bow—_ Thank you, thank you! Elazul went back to mother-henning Pearl once he and Rei got back to Domina, is where he went. Sorry if that was confusing. He'll be popping back up shortly. Very shortly.

**RaspberryIce7656:** Thank you! I know, that irritated me too, when I was heading back down. That's why I like the balconies, even if they aren't available on every floor. Jewel Beasts equal unloved.

————

Bud looked up from weeding the few patches of flowers around the front door at a particularly loud sneeze that came from inside the house and shook his head. It was now near the end of summer and his teacher had caught a nasty cold from her last adventure, so she was upstairs in bed resting. The story she'd told them was about those pirate penguins with a walrus for a captain, who all sailed on a ship called the _S.S. Buccaneer_.

She described to them a penguin who went fishing over the side of the ship when they'd hit a calm spot and caught a bottle that had held a spiteful djin inside. Predictably, _she_ was the one who ended up fighting it and stuffing it back into its bottle.

Then the pirates had taken her to the Mekiv Caverns to find a treasure map owned by a group of religious Dudbears that called themselves 'the Diggers', who believed that salvation could be won through hard work. She'd found their boss, Roger, yelling at the poor things for dropping the map—then, just when she'd found it, the Diggers had come up and pulled the map into pieces during an argument over who should hold it.

Rei had then grumpily complained that she'd had to chase down every one of the eight fragments before Roger caught up, and that 'holding still' seemed to be a concept totally foreign to the Diggers. _"There I was, yelling 'Gak!' at the top of my lungs, and the silly twits just kept running around in circles,"_ was about what Bud's teacher had said around what would be the first of many sneezes. But she still seemed pleased that she'd gotten the map back together. She was definitely pleased with the Wendell silver that Captain Tusk had given her in thanks for her work.

Lisa wasn't so happy about the two little pink crabs currently roaming their master's study, also gifts from Captain Tusk.

Another sneeze came from upstairs, along with some unintelligible swearing in a thick voice nearly unrecognizable as Rei's. Bud had found out that his teacher was a lousy patient, so he stayed out of the way and kept his head down while Lisa coaxed the ill sprite to drink plenty of liquids.

It wasn't like Rei didn't know she had to rest. Wisp bless, she was the one who'd confined herself to her bedroom the minute she realized she was getting sick. But that didn't mean she was happy about it. His teacher was _bored_.

Lisa came out of the cottage looking mildly frazzled about something. Probably involving Master Rei.

"Bud, do me a favor and go to the apothecary shop over in Domina?" his sister asked quietly, tugging at her ponytail as she often did when stressed. "We're out of willow-bark for tea. I'd go, but Master Rei fell asleep just a second ago and I want to make sure she stays that way for a little while."

Bud dusted his hands and knees off with a grin for his twin. "Sure, Lisa. You're better with her right now than I am, anyway."

Obviously relieved, Lisa gave him some money and then fled in a tiptoe back into the house. She still had lunch to make and a teacher who insisted she wasn't hungry to feed.

———

Bud trotted into Domina with his head high; he was on an important errand that would help Master Rei, and by the Flammies, he was going to do a _good_ job and get his teacher to smile.

But since he was no hand at bargaining, he turned onto the paving-stone path that led up to the Marchants' front door and poked his head in.

"Hi, Mr. Mark," he greeted the man sprawled dejectedly in the big chair near the fireplace. "Is Rachel in?"

"Upstairs in her room," Mark sighed, sounding like his usual depressed self. The insect-armored man was brisk and efficient in business, Bud thought to himself as he climbed the stairs, but _elementals_, he was gloomy!

"Heya, Rachel!" Bud piped at the top of the steps, watching his friend pace restlessly by her window. "I need your help for a bit, 'kay? Master Rei's sick an' we're out of willow-bark. Wanna help me give that ol' biddy at the 'pothecary a run for her dentures?"

The fairy-winged girl giggled, nodding as she pattered outside with the young Elf. Bud grinned to himself, proud of his investigation skills. When Master Rei had first taken him and his sister in, he'd paid attention to who his teacher had spoken to and how. The knife-fighter had spoken to Rachel like the girl was far more talkative than she seemed, with the familiarity of a long friendship.

It turned out that Rei had taken care of Rachel when they were younger, so there was a sort of sibling-bond there, but Bud had more wisdom than most boys his age, and never brought it up with Rachel. It had taken him a lot of patience, the kind he used to get wild barn cats and other animals to come to him after a monster attack, to even get Rachel to open up to him. He didn't want her mad at him.

A shake of his head at something his friend said to him brought to his attention the need for a haircut sometime in the near future; his dark pink hair was starting to get into his eyes and was a good inch or two past his ears. Bad enough the other boys in town sometimes teased him for the color; he didn't want to have to explain to Master Rei that he was fighting because someone had called him a girl.

Implying that 'girl' was an insult to his pride to the woman who could trounce him without any real effort was a good way to get himself into more trouble than he could handle.

Hauling his thoughts out of that risky direction brought Bud back around to Rachel, quietly chatting beside him.

Rachel knew _lots_. Bud supposed it came from being the daughter of shop-owners in a small town; everyone had to go there for everything from eating knives to the two-handed monster swords that Rei had told him were called halberds. And people gossiped. Someone who had sharp ears and a quick mind could pick up a lot of stuff that way.

Which was, he supposed, why he'd taken to finishing his lessons as fast as possible so that he'd have more time to spend with her. They usually ended up in a tree on the western end of Domina, talking about anything and everything with the blithe condescension that children used when discussing their elders. It wasn't because he had a crush on her and liked her smiles more than Master Rei's. Nope. Not at all.

These thoughts and others occupied Bud for the short walk between Rachel's house and the apothecary in the upper market, near where the fortune-teller MeiMei sat in that giant basket of hers. A tiny bell jingled over the door when the two children walked in, and the grandmotherly woman at the counter gave them a toothy smile.

"Afternoon, dearies. What can I get fer you today?"

"Hi, Granny Lobelia," Bud replied cheerfully. Despite the comment he'd made earlier, he liked this woman. She always had cinnamon candies for anyone who came in. "Master Rei caught a cold last time she went out, and we're all out of willow-bark."

To his surprise, Granny 'Lia sighed and shook her head. "I'm sorry, Bud, but I'm all out, too. Your teacher's not the only one who caught a cold; half the village's sniffling. My stock of linden and peppermint's bare as bones."

"Oh. Thanks anyway, Granny 'Lia." In his disappointment, Bud nearly forgot to claim his piece of candy before he left. He sucked on the spicy treat while trying to think of where he could get some useful willow-bark. The local trees around town were where Granny 'Lia got most of her ingredients and she took exactly what she could without hurting the trees. So those were out. He didn't have the equipment at hand to make the jaunt to Gato Grottoes, and Lisa would need the willow-bark for Master Rei this afternoon, probably. His teacher would be miserable for the two days (at least) that it would take him to get there and back, and she'd skin him when he got home for going by himself.

So, where else did willow trees grow?

His trouble alarm went off a split second before a massive shadow loomed over the two children, cast by none other than the rabbit-merchant, Niccolo. Who was giving Bud a rather expectant grin. "Hello, boy," the furry barge greeted the Elf child way too cheerfully. "Is there anything I can get for you today?"

"How about getting yourself some decency?" sneered Bud, grabbing Rachel by her wrist and hauling her to safer ground. Rei would prefer croaking to trying to buy anything from that money-gouging, greedy walking pillow, as Bud knew perfectly well. _Or at the very least,_ he amended to himself, _she'd beat some fairer prices out of him, first. _

Being rather height-challenged for his age, Bud would be at a distinct disadvantage in any fight against a creature a good five times bigger than he is, and Rei hadn't gotten around to teaching him how to high jump yet. (She was still trying to teach him how to brew potions without blowing up half the workshop.)

After they left the market, Rachel starting tugging _him_ towards the pub, her quiet suggestion that Amanda or Barrett might have some medicine perking Bud up. He followed the young girl willingly into the food-scented dimness of Rei's favorite hangout—and then his good mood evaporated at the sight of a man clad for the desert standing by the cold fireplace, a girl the same age as his teacher and dressed in white sitting on a barrel beside him.

He hadn't met the guy yet, but it was easy to match the aloof blue gaze with the descriptions of the Jumi Elazul. And Elazul was one person that Bud had no desire of ever meeting. He supposed the girl standing with him (_Pearl?_) would probably be okay, but the Elf already knew that Elazul was gonna rub him the wrong way no matter what.

Bud tried to make like a cat and slip back outside without being noticed, but Rachel had already gone into the back of the pub to find the couple who owned it, her shyness nonexistent since they were close cousins to her mother. So her voice was perfectly clear when she asked if they had any willow-bark that Bud could take home for Rei.

Elazul stirred from his place by the hearth, concern writ in blue eyes that were suddenly full of life. "Rei is sick?"

More than a month with Rei had allowed her to ingrain a distaste for lies in her students, leaving Bud to glower at the Jumi, at a loss for a cover story. "She just caught a cold, is all. 'Nother couple of days, she'll be fine. 'S not like we need _your_ help."

Oh, he could just _hear_ Rei's voice scolding him in his head and telling him to be nice to the guy. But Rei's orders had been to be nice if Elazul had come to their home, and this wasn't home. So Bud was going to make it perfectly clear that, no matter what, _he_ Did Not Approve. In the meantime, it was funny watching the Jumi Knight turn an interesting pale color.

"Rei is my friend," Elazul gritted out between clenched teeth; the Jumi girl keeping a restraining hand on his arm probably had something to do with why Bud hadn't needed to run for the hills yet. "I would help her, if I can."

Rachel came trotting back out from the private area of the pub, a small clay pot sealed with cloth and wax in her hands. "Bud, Auntie says you can have…" she trailed off, spotting the two travelers and ducking behind her shyness again.

"She doesn't need your help, and I don't want it," Bud told the Knight flat-out. "I want you to stay away from my teacher. C'mon, Rache." And Bud left with his head high, leaving an indignant Elazul fuming behind him.

Once outside, Rachel spent a moment or two looking back over her shoulder at the pub as they crossed the footbridge out of Domina. "What was that about?" she asked after Bud stopped hissing his breath out. "Bud?"

"Not sure how much you know about Jumi, Rache, but being friends with one is _dangerous_," he growled in reply, shoving fingers through his hair. "People die when they get too close to a Jumi and something bad happens. They're fragile as glass if you know where to hit. And my teacher is stupidly fond of those two."

"Oh." Rachel sent one last glance back, then held out the jar. "Auntie said that she doesn't have any willow-bark, but she did have some linden. It's good for lowering fevers."

Bud frowned half-heartedly. "Linden's good, but it doesn't do anything for aches. It's really not a serious cold, but Master Rei's been hobbling around like an arthritic granny."

"Then I don't really know how to help. Mother's allergic to willow-bark, so we don't have any. Have you thought about checking along Luon? Now that the bandits are gone, it's pretty safe to travel on, and I'm sure I remember seeing willows along a few of the gullies."

Bud beamed at her. "Great idea, Rache! C'n you get Pelican to take a quick message to Lisa? Let her know I'm gonna be a bit later than we thought?"

"Sure!" And the fairy-winged girl trotted off, heading for the section of town where Pelican usually hung out. Bud just made sure that his flute was in its' pouch at his waist and that his mother's frying pan was in the little portable pocket space at the small of his back, and headed up the road for Luon Highway.

———

Bud was sweaty and tired late that afternoon when he got home, but he had a fat pouch full of willow-bark shavings and a pocket crammed with seeds for Trent. He also needed to hammer out a dent that a Lullabud had put in his mother's frying pan. He'd take care of that after he gave Lisa the bark and had gotten a bath.

Letting himself in through the front gate—and wishing for the hundredth time that he was good enough to jump over it—Bud ambled up the walk and tiptoed inside the house. "Lis?" he called quietly, not wanting to wake up his teacher if she was still asleep.

"Bud!" Lisa greeted as quietly, letting him know that, yes, Rei was still asleep. "You're back! What kept you?"

"Well, I had to travel about halfway along Luon before I found any willows I could get bark from. Granny 'Lia was all out of the usual cold medicines."

Lisa looked at him, obviously puzzled. "That's not what I meant. I got your note, I was just wondering why you'd bother when that Knight guy was bringing some over."

Bud froze in midstep on his way to the bathroom, staring at his twin with huge blue eyes. "Who did what?" he asked slowly.

"The Knight? The one that Master Rei is always talking about?" Lisa spoke just as slowly, puzzlement turning to worry. "He said that you told him Master Rei was sick, so he was nice enough to bring over some medicine. Are you okay?" she added, brow creasing. "You look like you just swallowed a frog-berry."

She had good reason to worry; Bud had been swearing like a sailor under his breath after Lisa had mentioned Elazul again. "I am _so_ going to get him back for this!" he vowed, shoving his dirt-smudged pouch of bark at his sister before stomping into the bathroom.

Lisa looked back and forth from pouch to bathroom door for a moment or two, muttered something unladylike when she heard the sounds of a certain knife-fighter stirring, and went to go make some peanut-butter-and-apricat-jelly sandwiches for her strange little family.

———

Less than a week later Rei had gotten rid of her cold and was indulging in her favorite pastime: exploring. The letter from Xan about a place called Polpota Harbor had gotten her curious, and that curiosity had been eating her alive since she'd reread the letter while sick. So she set her students another lesson to accomplish while she was gone (nearly two weeks) swore she'd write, and then she'd raced for territory unknown. Bud and Lisa hadn't complained too much; Lisa was too absorbed in one of her projects to _want_ to go adventuring, and Bud had been satisfied with the promise that Rei would ask around about the locations of the other Wisdoms.

So the knife-fighter enjoyed the quiet of a campfire and a Rabite footwarmer…and the breath-taking view of the gigantic conch shell that made up the Seaside Hotel, emerging from an ocean that shifted from a brighter green than her eyes to a clear sapphire blue, when she finally made it to Polpota.

Not quite ready to explore the grandeur of the hotel just yet, Rei instead let her footsteps take her to the little marketplace attached to the hotel by masonry and rickety wooden boardwalks. There she found one of the ubiquitous students from the academy there, selling minerals and materials that he'd collected from the local area. Rei happily bought several kinds of minor Mana crystals from him and a few raw materials for crafting in her spare time.

A narrow set of stairs led to a male Flowerling (the gender-specific, second stage of Sproutling existence) selling weapons and reasonably potent musical instruments. She spent several minutes perusing his stock and talking shop with the brightly colored fellow, but in the end decided against buying.

Back down on the ground, she wandered over to a booth covered in greenery and exotic flowers (ironically enough, run by another male Flowerling) and decided to strike up conversation. These odd, cheery creatures so far had proved to be lively conversationalists, after all.

This one, like the other, immediately starting talking once she'd walked up to his booth. "I heard that people don't feel safe at the Seaside Hotel anymore!" he confided amidst his wares.

Rei tilted her head to one side, curious. "Because of a thief?"

"No, no. A ghost! How scary!" The Flowerling didn't seem particularly frightened, though. He was acting like all the gossipers back home; scandalized.

There was a watery 'bu-whup' sound, and Rei immediately turned to look towards the person-sized finger of stone that poked at the water in front of the booth. A mermaid popped into existence, seated on the stone, after dispelling what looked like a giant blue bubble. She had coppery scales the same color as the wavy hair spilling down her back, with long strands of seaweed knotted in her hair and around her waist.

"There's no ghost," she grumped, leaning back on her hands and letting her tail bend at the spot her knees would be, if she had any.

"Flameshe!" cried the Flowering, his red fringe of a beard quivering in indignation. "Shame on you, calling people liars!"

"You don't think there's a ghost?" Rei asked, giving the Flowering a little wave of her hand before crouching down near the mermaid.

Flameshe snorted, her fins curling to rest near her hip. "Ghosts? Aw, somebody's just pulling a prank. Everyone knows there's no such things as ghosts."

_Everyone who hasn't seen a woman disappear into nothing, without the faintest trace of any magic,_ Rei thought to herself, remembering that strange sprite up in the top room of Leires. "I'm Rei," she said, introducing herself.

"I'm Flameshe, a mermaid, as you can see. Pleased to meet you!"

Taking the few steps needed to get her back to the flower booth, Rei asked its' owner, "The Seaside Hotel, you said?"

His head bobbed. "Head over to the hotel, in the middle of town. Maybe you'll see the ghost!"

The knife-fighter chuckled and admitted that that would be an interesting thing to see. In thanks for the information/advice/shameless gossip, she bought a brightly-colored orchid bloom and tucked it into her hair over her ear, then ambled off for the hotel. Time for some real adventuring.

…Funny, though. Xan had been through here not long ago, and he hadn't mentioned a ghost. He'd written something about a siren living in the area, but no ghost. Huh. Even her brother wasn't spacey enough to forget something like that.

She heard Flameshe grumble as she walked off, "That ghost is just somebody's trick. I can't believe everyone's getting so worked up about it."

The way to get into the hotel from the main street was a thin bridge of incredibly durable shell, overhung with what Rei guessed a scalloped frill of more shell, all one solid piece. It made Rei let out her breath in a low, impressed whistle as she went in.

The lobby of the hotel was richly decorated—the carpet alone was plush enough to have Rei's feet sink in almost to the tops of her toes. There was a desk in front of her and a desk on her right, just past a half-dome of a scallop which brought in the scent of hot sand and salt from outside. Both desks had a man standing behind them, wearing the turbans with a single brooch and the loose clothing of a family she'd been calling the Moti. At least, she figured it was a family, or maybe a duplication spell gone haywire, since she'd seen nearly a dozen of them—all male, and each wearing the same face.

Green Moti (his turban jewel was green) at the front desk gave her a dazzling, professional smile that didn't have much of the intended effect, since his eyes were red-rimmed and dark-ringed. Obviously the man hadn't been sleeping much. "Welcome to the Seaside Hotel. Our security is top-notch. Inspector Boyd is on patrol. We look forward to serving you."

There came a faint 'whoam' sound from behind Rei—she spun around and stared at a person dressed in golden Imperial armor that stood, translucent, on the rug for a moment, then faded out with the exact same sound.

"Did you…" Green Moti began shakily.

"…just…" continued his partner, a red jewel in his turban.

"…see something?" finished Green Moti. When Rei nodded, both men let out a despairing wail and clutched at their turbans.

Red Moti moaned and looked over at the knife-fighter. "I can't take it anymore! Do you know anyone who's not scared of ghosts?"

Scratching lightly at the nape of her neck, Rei replied, "Well, I can help. I don't know what I can do about something I can't touch, but…"

"Please!" cried Green Moti. "I will reward you!" But Rei waved that part and their thanks away, choosing to explore the small flight of stairs that the warm breeze was climbing up. She found herself under a stone awning that led out onto a two-level walk that led to the source of another aroma: cooking food. Movement caught her eye, and she looked up to the second level, head-height and balanced on top of a wall, to spot a familiar purple coat pacing itself out.

A small ramp led to the second level and Rei scampered up to better greet the mouse-man known as Inspector Boyd. He hadn't even ditched the coat in this weather, let alone his pipe. "Inspector Boyd!" she hailed as she approached. "Long time no see!"

He puffed on his pipe and replied cheerfully enough, "Inspector Boyd, on duty. Any news?"

"I just got hired to help catch a pesky ghost," Rei told him, somewhat embarrassed…but only somewhat. The rest of her was running headlong with her curiosity into the strange adventure.

The inspector huffed, blew out a bit of smoke, and scowled. "What? A ghost? Bah! No such thing!"

In turn, the knife-fighter laughed. "I think Flameshe the mermaid would agree with you. But what are you doing here? Mr. Moti said you were acting as security."

To her surprise, the thin layer of skin on his ears turned bright pink. "I'm here on vacation," he blustered. "Not work, VACATION." He paused. "But I do like the ocean."

Rei just gave him a weird look and squeezed by him to climb down the ladder. There was a giant clam shell just past the little lighthouse thingy at the end of the walkway, and she wanted to know what was making that heavenly smell.

She turned a corner and found herself amidst a cluster of tables, all sheltered beneath the top half of the half-open clamshell, with three or four of the penguin pirates and…she blinked. Gilbert? What in the name of Salamander was that idiotic love-sick centaur doing _here_? She had a thought, and snickered. If he thought he could sweet-talk that spitfire Flameshe he had another thing coming.

Passing the chalkboard sign with 'Sea's Bounty' written boldly in pink chalk, she immediately started talking to the penguins. She liked them, they were silly. One told her that the view of the sea from here was 'quite a gem' but didn't compare to their ship. The other two chatted about various things—like their brother-in-arms (fins?), about the sea. She ignored Gilbert; he was too busy singing a syrupy ballad to notice her, anyway.

The delicious aroma turned out to be a number of seafood kebobs grilling just behind the counter by the entryway. Rei bought a shrimp-and-scallop one that had chunks of pineapple, then passed back through the hotel to explore the rest of the area past the market. The Flowerling waved as she passed his booth, still munching on her snack.

Beyond the marketplace was…another beach. This one was shaped like a crescent moon, with lush tropical foliage lining the edges and a thin ribbon of sand cushioning the waves. Right in front of her was a rising curve of something that looked like a rib-bone of something massive, but was made out of the same seaworn gray rock that supported the town and hotel. At the very tip of the promontory stood a rather unimpressive figure, dressed in Granz steel armor trimmed in green enamel. Rei had no problem recognizing the armor worn by the Emperor's soldiers, even if she chose to acknowledge neither kingdom nor empire.

However, despite his station, the man greeted her politely enough when she introduced herself. "I am Thoma," he replied, "imperial soldier. I am investigating the imperial ship that sank ten days ago."

"May I ask you a couple of questions?" Rei inquired, tilting her head to let her hair-pipes chime.

"Hmm?" came the distracted answer. Blue eyes, nearly hidden behind his visor, managed to focus on her instead of the sea. "What is it?"

"What do you think about the ghost?"

He smiled faintly. "I wonder about the ghost myself…"

"You said you were investigating a shipwreck?"

Thoma nodded, the faint smile vanishing beneath what Rei was betting was sorrow. Who had he lost on the ship? "The ship was heading to this port by secret command of the emperor. The weather was fair that day. It truly is a mystery..."

Rei thanked him and headed back to the hotel to report her progress—or considerable lack thereof. For a ghost story, it certainly wasn't as interesting as half the tales she'd read.

Not paying attention to anything in particular—like where she was going—Rei accidentally bumped into a fish-man who had been standing in the middle of the hotel path, just staring at nothing. He didn't look unusual, aside from being on land and actually intelligent, if the basket-thing full of water that he was using to keep his belly and legs wet was something to go by. His overall coloring was stripes of light blue and yellow, the latter being the predominant color. He had a few short quasi-fins in front of his dorsal fin that did a pretty good impression of bangs, tinted green.

Rei quickly began an apology, but the fish-man only huffed indignantly and swelled like a frog. "Don't get fresh with me! I'm not like you commoners!"

"I'm trying to say that I'm sorry. Hey, did you hear about the ghost flitting around?"

He waved a fin at her in an obvious gesture for her to leave. "I don't like beggars. Shoo! Shoo! Shoo!" Then he flounced into the hotel, leaving Rei to stare after him with her jaw threatening to drop. She'd never thought there'd be _two_ people in the world with the arrogance of Niccolo. Goddess help her.

…Oh, and she'd never been called a commoner before. That one was new. And…astonishingly polite for an insult.

Still trying to decide whether she should laugh or be insulted, Rei ambled into the hotel lobby. There she found the fish-man talking with Red Moti at the side desk, anticipation gleaming in large round eyes. "Why, it's Mr. Fish!" spoke the merchant.

"Is Revanshe performing today?" said fish asked, nearly bouncing in his hope.

"Yes, she is!" Red Moti confirmed, adding in a confidential tone, "Her dancing is even sexier than before!"

Rei watched in some bemusement as 'Mr. Fish' let out an overjoyed burble of laughter and plunked down a rather large leather bag. It made a heavy, distinctive, metallic _ka-chink_ sound when it hit the counter. "Alright, I'll rent the whole hall. Here's 50,000 Lucre."

Rei's jaw dropped. That much? For a single woman? Just for dancing? Her mind descended into incoherent splutters for a few moments in sheer disbelief.

Red Moti thanked him and merely smiled indulgently when Mr. Fish dashed through a doorway across from his desk. Green Moti turned to his brother/duplicate and said in disbelief, "But you know Revanshe hates that lecherous fish!"

Red Moti sighed and answered back, "What can we do? We've lost all our customers since that ghost came." He shrugged, putting the bag of money in a safe behind his desk. "I'm trying to squeeze that newly-rich fish for all he's worth!"

His brother made a face. "I guess you're right," he admitted reluctantly. Rei sort of tuned them out after that, an interested thought percolating through her head. Newly-rich, huh? So much for not being like 'you commoners'. Curiosity kneading her with all four sets of kitty-cat claws, she went back through the tunnel-exit to talk some more with Inspector Boyd. She heard that weird 'whoam' sound again and twin yelps of fright from the Motis. She kept hearing both sounds every time she left the lobby. Was the ghost shy, now, to not want to appear in front of her?

She found Inspector Boyd still on the upper walk, and proceeded to query him about the Basket Fish, the ship, and the ghost (again). Of Basket Fish, the mouse-man commented, "He is so arrogant due to his unbelievable inheritance." Of the ship: "I heard it sank. If the weather was clear, maybe it was engine trouble!" Rei made a note to lend the Inspector one of her books on ocean-going vessels. None of the galleons or other large ships owned and operated by the Empire used engines. They were too big, too bulky, and carried too great a risk of setting the ship on fire. Magic was easier, safer, and far more useful, especially if one was a favored of the Elemental, Jinn.

Boyd's observation of the ghost was dry and to the point. "Ah, the one that haunts the Seaside Hotel? What nonsense!"

Rei groaned. "Inspector Boooyyyd! Scatter me some crumbs, at least!"

He puffed on his pipe for a moment, looking rather pleased with her for some reason. "Well," he beamed, "you sure are thorough! Quite impressive! Is there anything else?"

Rei huffed at him, then tried for the millionth time to get her bangs out of her face by raking them back with her fingers. "Why are you even here? I'm finding it hard to believe that you, of all people, are working security for a posh hotel as a vacation."

The smile vanished from the mouse-man's face, and he puffed more slowly on that briarwood pipe of his. "Do you suspect me?" he asked her seriously, voice dropping into a careful, private tone that could barely be heard over the waves rolling against the sea wall they were standing on. "You're right…I came here on assignment. The jewel hunter left a note here, and said she would take the Blue Eye."

He nearly swallowed his tobacco-smoke wrong at the sudden, feral expression that turned a cheerful, exasperated girl into a cold predator. "Sandra is here?" came at him low, sharp.

Expelling his lungful of smoke, Inspector Boyd nodded. "So if you see anyone with blue eyes, report back to me."

The knife-fighter made a quick trip to the lounge area of the hotel, where a slender woman dressed in an outfit straight out of a desert prince's harem danced on a small stage. It took a moment to get past the cream-coffee fur and wing-like ears, but Rei saw that Revanshe's eyes were gray, not blue. She immediately went straight back to the Inspector.

When he asked her if she'd found anyone with blue eyes, she didn't have to think twice. "The imperial soldier, Thoma. I met him on the promontory on the far side of the market. His eyes are blue, the only ones I've seen since I got here."

Boyd looked at her in surprise. "What? The imperial soldier? I see…" Puff, puff. "I'll check it out." He left at a respectable clip, leaving Rei to trace her fingers over a thin, pink scar that ran across her lower bicep. She was remembering Leires, and the fury that had gripped her when her quarry had slipped out of her grasp a second time. She vowed that Sandra wouldn't be allowed to reach the charmed number of three.

She ran her fingers over the sheaths at her hips, and took off at a dead run.

———

Thoma wasn't at the promontory when Rei went to search for him and Boyd. Instead, she found him at the Sea's Bounty restaurant, talking to the penguin crew members relaxing there. She rounded the corner in time to hear him begin his questioning of one. "I am Thoma, imperial soldier. Do you have any information regarding the shipwreck?"

The addressed penguin, slightly tipsy from sampling the local grog, hiccupped and replied solemnly, "Underestimate the sea at yer own risk!"

"Right, right!" agreed one of his shipmates, raising a tankard in emphasis.

"That might be right," Thoma said slowly, obviously trying to unravel that into a useful answer. His patience was rewarded when the first penguin spoke up again.

"Wait a second! I don't know if it's true," the crewman cautioned, "but there's a guy named Basket Fish. He said he sees everything that happens under the sea."

Thoma blinked. "Basket…?"

The penguin who'd raised his tankard added helpfully, "He's at the Seaside Hotel, drooling over that dancer." Which gave Rei a most amusing moment of wondering if fish, whose aquatic life rendered spit useless, could actually drool.

Meanwhile, Thoma thanked the penguins and paid for their next round. He nodded politely to Rei as he left, who turned on her heel and trailed him back out. Somehow, they ended up on the front porch/entryway to the hotel, where Thoma stopped for a moment. He sounded, for once, like the nineteen-year-old he looked like under that armor when he mused out loud, "Basket Fish, huh? What a stupid name."

"You! You! Stop!" yelled a familiar voice. Both Rei and Thoma turned to face Inspector Boyd, who was breathlessly jogging across the thin path to reach them.

"Inspector, you really need to exercise more," chided Rei as he got close enough for her to talk to him without shouting. The mouse-man ignored her and handed Thoma his card.

"I've discovered a clue regarding the imperial ship and the hotel ghost!" Boyd told them triumphantly.

"The imperial ship and the ghost?" echoed Thoma blankly.

"But you said you didn't believe in ghosts," added Rei, confused. Again Boyd dismissed her like she wasn't there, which was starting to get on her nerves. Venstries, as a general rule, didn't like being the center of attention—but when they were talking, that person should acknowledge them, damn it.

Instead, the Inspector asked Thoma, "What do you think? Would you mind helping me out?"

Thoma made a thoughtful noise, then replied, "Certainly."

Instead of making some emotional outburst, like Rei expected, Boyd said, "Why, thank you, Mr…What was your name?"

"Thoma."

Rei kept her mouth shut this time. She knew that she'd already told the loudmouthed detective the soldier's name, and he wasn't a type to forget something like that so easily. Something was fishy here, and it wasn't today's catch. So she followed in silence when the two males walked into the hotel.

When they got into the lounge and essentially cornered Basket Fish, Rei tapped the Inspector on the shoulder. "Inspector, I was wondering if I might have a word?"

"I'm busy right now…" grumbled Boyd. "Later."

Thoma introduced himself, as always, and asked the fish-man, "Do you know anything about the shipwreck?"

Basket Fish gave them all a wary look and sidled away a step or two. "I don't know anything…Leave me alone."

In a cajoling voice that Rei had never heard him use, Inspector Boyd gave his pipe a quick puff, then said, "Say…I heard you're very wealthy. That's pretty amazing." Thoma gazed sidelong at the mouse-man without a word, suddenly uneasy. Rei had already tightened her hands around her knife hilts in preparation to strike. Basket Fish, however, took on a smug expression and laughed. Boyd continued with, "And you inherited an incredible jewel? May I see it?"

The sea-dweller gave them all another wary look, especially Boyd. "Hmmm, I don't know…"

"It's called the Blue Eye," Inspector Boyd added, his tone calculated to show indifference, "and it shows everything that happens in the ocean."

Thoma seized on that with all the hope he could muster. "Let me see it, please! It might tell us how the ship—"

Basket Fish cut him off cold. "No."

Up on the little stage, forgotten until now, the dancer Revanshe rested her hands on her knees and smiled at Basket Fish from beneath her veil. "I want to see the Blue Eye, too!" she told her would-be-suitor. The fish-man's attitude went a complete one-eighty; with gratifying speed he reached into a compartment in his basket and pulled out a palm-sized blue stone that chimed softly the moment sunlight touched it.

Rei immediately went on high alert when something in her tugged in response to the chime, sensitized thanks to the time she'd spent with Elazul and Pearl. She knew that the jewel Basket Fish was holding with proper reverence was actually the core to some poor, unlucky Jumi. And that Sandra wouldn't be too far away, now that it was out in the open.

All of that thinking happened in less than a heartbeat—and then the jewel flared, wrapping them into a vision of an Imperial ship crewed by men wearing the enameled steel armor of the Emperor's lesser soldiers.

_Sunlight, the ocean's constant, quiet voice murmuring under the bow of a graceful, three-mast ship. Lined up on deck by a railing are ten men whose faceplates and armor trim are reds, greens, blues and yellows. One whose enamel is red stands in front of the other nine, pacing back and forth as he speaks to them. "We have been ordered to obtain the ultimate firearm by our lord. Polpota may have important clues about it. Our lord has given us permission to use force, if necessary. We must succeed, men!"_

_"Yes, sir!" comes the obedient, excited chorus. _

_"Back to your posts!" Even as the soldiers begin to move, another comes running up from the direction of the forecastle. _

_"Captain Thona!" the man cries, skidding to a breathless halt._

_"What's the matter?" asks the man who'd spoken before. His voice shows the worry that his faceplate hides. _

_Somehow, the messenger finds a salute in him somewhere and snaps it off. "A sea hag is approaching!"_

_Captain Thona's body stiffens. "A sea hag?!" he repeats, alarmed. "Do not listen to it's voice, men!" _

_The messenger's warning and his own come too late. Before even one man can raise his hands to his ears, a haunting melody drowns out the voice of the ocean and wraps them all in enchantment. A creature with a woman's porcelain face and wings that put peacocks to shame swoops overhead, dodging rigging and sails as she sings. A second pass, and all the men on deck slump into listening, all unheeding of the rocks dead ahead…_

Rei shook her mind free of the vision at the same time everyone else did; she, however, appeared to be the only to notice that Inspector Boyd was no longer in the room with them. Meanwhile, Thoma had pushed up his helm's faceplate and was rubbing at his eyes. "I see…" he whispered, voice thickened with grief. "So a sea hag sank it."

"How pitiful," mourned Revanshe, wiping her own tears away unashamedly.

Ships and deadly songs were forgotten, however, at the sight of golden armor that appeared in the space in front of Basket Fish without warning. The poor creature made a stunned, frightened noise and stared upwards at the featureless helmet.

"The truth of our death…" it intoned, sounding properly ghost-like and eerie. "Hand me the Blue Eye! The Blue Eye…!"

Rei swore silently upon finding that her feet were once again stuck to the floor in a spell she'd encountered once before in Gato Grottoes—then prepared to throw her knives as soon as she was presented a clear target.

Basket Fish had been fooled completely. He currently crouched in a trembling heap on the floor, still staring upwards at the so-called ghost. The second his antagonist demanded his treasure, the fish-man handed it over without hesitation, only whimpering, "Alright! I'll give you the Eye! Don't curse me…"

The sepulchral knight snatched the jewel up and bolted, barely dodging the knife that bit into a potted plant as they ran by. Feet still trapped, Rei lost her balance and ended up in a twisted sprawl on the plush carpet, unable to take a second shot.

Having survived his mugging with all body parts—if not his purse or dignity—intact, Basket Fish was uncurling from his huddle, eyes wide. "I was so scared!" he breathed to no one in particular. "I didn't know ghosts ran!"

"They _don't_, you addle-pated, sushi-breathed idjit!" Rei snapped, fighting to untangle herself when the spell suddenly released her feet. Inspector Boyd chose that moment to jog in, only somewhat out of breath, his coat in disarray.

"Inspector Boyd on duty!" he puffed, pipe clenched between his teeth. "I have a question regarding your inheritance…"

"My inheritance is gone!" wailed Basket Fish, the implications of what had just happened finally sinking in.

Boyd stared at him. "Huh? What about the Blue Eye?"

"Didn't you see, Inspector?" asked Thoma, amazed. "The ghost came and took it away!"

The mouse-man let out a surprised huff, then took a heavy draw of smoke and growled back, "Ghosts aren't real! Wake up!"

"_There's_ the Inspector Boyd I know and trust," groaned Rei as she finally picked herself up off the floor. Running after Sandra was futile now and she knew it; not even she, in all her stubbornness, could run properly on a sprained ankle.

"Why were you on the floor, Miss Rei?" Inspector Boyd asked.

"I was memorizing the carpet weave, thank you for asking," Rei replied, making sure to make her sarcasm painfully obvious.

Thoma, meantime, had tapped the Inspector on the shoulder to regain his attention. "You were here, weren't you?" he wanted to know. "You came and asked for my help regarding the Imperial ship and the hotel ghost."

Realization was dawning on the heavy features of a certain lawkeeper. "Here? Me?" And Rei was given the chance to watch the reactions of the others as Boyd once more literally steamed from his ears and hopped up and down like a dried cornflower kernel in a frying pan. "Blast it! It was the jewel hunter! I'll bet that ghost was, too!"

"Give the man a prize," muttered Rei, who had given up on standing and had plunked herself down on a convenient chair. She'd already taken bandaging out of her pack and was in the midst of wrapping her ankle. Her potions didn't work on ordinary muscle strain, yet, unfortunately, which meant she was in for a long walk home.

She didn't bother watching as Basket Fish collapsed in a stunned heap, foam bubbling in his mouth from his distress. She was too busy keeping her temper from making her either wrap her injury too tight or wreck the lounge—it was even odds to which would happen if she let it slip.

Later, after Green Moti had considerately offered her a free room for as long as it took her ankle to heal (she declined) he handed her a blue glass bottle whose sides were bulged out here and there. The better to secure the leather thong that was wrapped around it, she judged as she inclined her head graciously and accepted her reward. The top of the bottle was stoppered and sealed with heavy leather, rough twine, and thick wax. It was hard to tell in the afternoon light, but it almost looked like there was a mote of light shifting restlessly inside.

Rei made a firm decision to keep the thing stoppered and stuffed it into the midst of her clothes within her pack. Then she nodded again to the Motis, and left. Polpota's beauty was spoiled for her, at least for now, thanks to Sandra.

———

Bud looked out the window of his and his sister's room and felt a broad grin spread across his face. "Master Rei's home!" he shouted excitedly, and bolted downstairs. He beat Lisa onto the front path by a hairsbreadth—only for both of them to still at the tension that strung their teacher's body like an overtuned harp, visible when she let herself through the front gate. She barely even acknowledged them as she strode past them, up the path and around the back of the house.

Her two apprentices trailed hesitantly after, halted in their tracks just outside the door to the workrooms by the dull thud of a heavy wooden bar dropping into place on the other side. Within a few minutes, smoke was pouring out of the smithy's chimney and hard, rhythmic hammering could faintly be heard through the earthen walls.

"She was limping," Lisa remarked carefully after they'd stood there and listened for a little while. "Do you think another jewel was stolen?"

Bud thought about that, then shrugged. "She didn't look like last time, so I don't know. I'm just glad that I'm not a piece of metal right now, because she definitely has some serious mad to work out."

Lisa agreed and the two went quietly into the house to make dinner, leaving their teacher to pound the bar of Granz steel she'd chosen into a total ruin.

———

Late that night, washed and dressed in clothes that weren't wrinkled from traveling, Rei sat in the rocking chair in front of her fire, injured foot propped on a cushion on the raised hearth. She'd ended up throwing out the steel she'd been working with earlier; temper had reduced it to a brittle mess that wouldn't hold an edge if the Goddess herself were to wish it to.

Bud and Lisa had taken it in turns to coax her into eating once she'd emerged from the smithy and had taken a lengthy bath. They had kept unusually quiet throughout the evening and had done their chores without even a token complaint. Now the twins sat at the table, books opened in front of them and none of the words sinking in past their concern.

At last, their patience was rewarded. With a drawn-out sigh, Rei abruptly relaxed into the cushions of her chair and rubbed wearily at her face. "Thanks for putting up with me," she muttered around her hand. "I really don't deserve you two."

"Nonsense," Lisa retorted lightly. "You're the first one to really care about us for a long time. We can deal with a little grumpiness now and then." The grateful half-smile that their teacher gave them, still mostly-hidden by her hand, was worth every bit of anxiety she'd given them and then some.

So when Bud quietly asked, "Was it another jewel that got stolen?", Rei felt she owed them at least a little explanation.

"Yeah. The Blue Eye. That makes two thefts that happened right under my nose, and the thief is good enough that she can catch me with her spells without me feeling a damn thing until it's too late." Her mouth twisted upwards into a wry, self-mocking smile as she dropped her hand. "You see why I was so grumpy." Then she rose and went silently to bed before they could ask her any more.

They were her students, yes, and she loved them dearly. And because they loved her back, and trusted her with their lives and their futures, she owed them. She would never tell them that she took the thefts so personally because Jumi lives were involved, not when they already worried over her friendships with Elazul and Pearl. Never tell them that, among the few reasons why she didn't cry was that she couldn't bring down Sandra if she was dead. Never tell them that if she lost Pearl or Elazul, she had the gut feeling that nothing would stop her from shedding those fatal tears.

She loved her students, and would never hurt them that way. Telling them any of the full truth would hurt them, sure as the sun rose, and would just make them worry even more for her.

Yes, they were hers to love and teach, and for that she owed them.

…But not that much.

———


	11. Celebrating Days

**Tiamat42:** Stay back! I have throwing cards and I know how to use 'em! Your reviews never cease to make me laugh, you know. And I agree about all the stories that are left untold or even unexplored in the game. You know, I managed to get that little stone student statue in Mark's shop to talk to me once? And I've never been able to do it again. Why is that thing there? And about a billion more questions that I won't fill the page up with.

**Starlight's Delight:** But I thought his feathers were blue. Also, thank you for being one of the people to leave a review ninety-nine point nine percent of the time. Flattery will win you bonuses. (And it's a _review_, silly. What care I the format?)

**Shadow's Rage: **The shops are there, you just can't go into them. Which just annoys the heck outta my adventurous nature…that is, if you can call my take-everything-that-isn't-nailed-down and explore-every-cranny attitude 'adventurous'. I'm glad you liked Bud's mini-adventure, I had fun and a bit of trouble writing it.

There won't be any unusual length of time between updates from here to Christmas, at least, even though I'll be hard at work keeping with my yearly tradition of making a carol-parody. I've gotten a nice chunk of story written ahead, past the Dragon arc and into a few of the more time-consuming sidequests. And happy Thanksgiving to those who celebrated it. If you didn't, well, I hope your Friday after that was quieter than mine.

That being said…Flammies' _teeth_, is it cold here!!

——————————

Time passed, and one early-autumn afternoon Elazul dug up his courage, strangled his paranoia, and went with Pearl to visit Rei at her home. The things that her apprentice had said still stung at him, but today he'd withstand any of the brat's protective nips because it was Rei's birthday today. Pearl had told him only two days ago after the Jumi girl had spent some time with Jennifer in the weapons shop.

Elazul could feel a cowardly part of him urge his feet to turn around and hole up in Domina again, but damn it, he was a Knight. So instead of running, he took a deep breath and opened the front gate with Pearl at his heels.

The Sproutling smiled at them in its wandering up and down the wide, shallow dirt steps of the main path, then pointed to the thin ribbon of pale earth that led to the back of the house. "Rei's playing," it piped in explanation. Elazul gingerly brushed past it and led Pearl around the back, past the monster barn—where a giant, lilac-scaled Rattler Boa was currently disciplining an unrepentant little Iffish covered in mud— and towards the workshop.

There came the sounds of clacking wood and harsh breathing, mixed in with the occasional shout. The now-curious Jumi Knight went around the hillock that topped the workshops, following a path that was little more than flattened grass. He stopped suddenly, stunned by the sight that opened up in front of him.

Rei was sparring. Her partner was a man in his mid-twenties with the same dusty-gold hair as the knife-fighter, though his was a tumble of half-curls that had been firmly tied back into a messy ponytail. The two were only a few inches different in height; their eyes were the same green of moss in sunlight. Their weapons were a pair of plain wooden staves that clacked and cracked with every fierce hit.

Rei was dressed in something besides her usual lilac-and-maroon outfit for a change, and wore only a threadbare pair of calf-length trousers and a tight shirt cut off at the belly. The stranger wore a longer pair of the same trousers, all of it old and long since faded to a pale gray.

Tales of adventure were written in a smattering of scars across skin both light gold and dark; the man's body had obviously spent years under open sky and had been well loved by the sun. Unlike Rei, though, who was whipcord under silk, this man was whipcord and stone under supple leather.

The fighter in Elazul couldn't help but approve, even as cowardice died twitching on the blade of a fiercer, darker emotion, one that hissed and smoldered on the edges.

With a loud shout and a downward strike, the stranger broke Rei's staff in two and took a few dancing steps backwards, grinning. "Now whatcha gonna do, huh?" he taunted breathlessly. "Snapped your weapon right in half. And you're no hand at flails."

Rei only grinned in response and spun her two pieces of wood in her grasp. "That was six months ago!" Then she darted into an attack that became a blur even to the eyes of the observers. Yet, somehow, the blond man blocked or parried every blow until the last. He lost what breath he had in a surprised grunt at a pulled blow to the stomach, backed by two sharp blows that sent his staff clattering out of his hands.

He reversed a few steps, hands raised in surrender, foolishly lining himself up between Rei and the pond. "I yield, already. Pax."

Rei put a bare foot on his chest and shoved hard. With a yelp of dismay, the man went tumbling into the shallows of the pond and disappeared under the water. He came up a moment later, blowing and spluttering and wiping strands of weed out of his face. The knife-fighter was laughing herself sick on the bank, pointing helplessly at the broad lily-pad perched at a jaunty angle on top of the man's head.

"That's….that's…for the…bad…bad directions!" Rei told him gleefully around her whoops before collapsing in a heap on the grass.

"You are _so_ lucky it's your birthday, cat," her victim growled in mock-anger as he slogged out of the pond. "I won't get you back for this _today_."

"I'm sooo scared!" giggled Rei, grinning up at him like mad. "'S what you…you get—oh goddess, your _face_!—for giving me…bad directions!"

Elazul figured—with the help of a silent nudge from Pearl—that now was probably a good time to make their presence known, and let a shiver of energy swirl out from his core. The effect was interesting, to say the least.

Rei immediately stiffened, laughter doused, to stare at the hillock with shock writ large in her eyes. Emerald orbs lit up brighter than fireworks as she flung herself up from the grass and pounced on the unprepared Knight with a glad cry. In a flail of limbs, three people went tumbling to the ground, accompanied by the joyous laughter of a certain knife-fighter.

"Elazul, Pearl! I can't believe you're here! Wh—yeek!" Elazul was freed of the pretty weight on his chest when the blond man snagged the back of Rei's shirt and hauled her bodily into the air and onto her feet.

"Little cat, if this is how you normally greet them I'm surprised they haven't run for the hills yet," scolded Elazul's rescuer in a cheerful, male version of the singular accent that had, before, only belonged to Rei. "For Mana's sake, let the fellow breathe. Up you get," he added without missing a beat, stretching out his arm and helping Elazul to his feet. Pearl had landed on her rump at the back of the tangle and was giggling at the rumpled mess of Elazul's hair, her laughter half-muffled behind her hands.

"Pearl!" Rei plopped down and hugged the Jumi girl tight. "Welcome, welcome! I'm so glad to see you!"

"Sorry," the blond man apologized to Elazul, wearing a sheepish, exasperated smile. "Don't know if you've seen her like this yet, but this is Rei on an endorphin rush. Give her a few minutes, she'll calm down. So you're Elazul, huh? Rei's written me about you a time or two. I'm Alexander, but just call me Xan, okay?"

"Rei's told me about you," Elazul told Rei's brother, feeling jealousy wave a white flag of surrender and retreat. The two clasped wrists amiably, and then Elazul gave the other man a wicked smile. "I thought you'd be taller."

"So did I," was the ready retort from Xan, who stood two inches shorter than the Jumi Knight. "But it wasn't to be. C'mon inside, we'll get you two some drinks and some snacks and get cleaned up a bit, yeah? Rei, quit acting like you're a barn cat on catnip and let go of the poor girl before she dies of a terminal blush."

"I thought I was the only one who called her cat," Elazul commented while Xan pried his sister off a red-faced Pearl and led them back towards the house.

Xan snorted. "Any guy I've met who knows which end of a blade goes into the bad guy calls her that. Part of it's 'cause she carries knives, and part of it's that damned curiosity of hers." Rei walked backwards on the path for a moment to stick her tongue out at him. Xan stuck his out in return and resumed. "We've both got a helping-people-thing but she's got more than enough curiosity for the both of us. Doncha, cat?"

"I'm not liiiisteniiiing," sing-songed Rei as she pranced ahead. "See me? I'm ignoring you."

Elazul eyed her warily and allowed a bit more space to come between them. "You said she calms down in a few minutes?"

"If she doesn't," grumbled Xan, "I'm going to give _her_ a turn in the pond."

———

After the two siblings had gotten their new guests settled and themselves cleaned up, everyone gathered around the large table in the main room. Rei had changed into her usual outfit but left her feet bare; Xan had stuffed most of his hair into a soft red hood-cap that laced up the back, with green-enamel triangles for clasps to keep it in place. A small spray of soft-edged feathers bounced with every motion of his head, shifting from pale blue to pale green to white, depending on how the light hit them.

The rest of him was red and gray; a red vest to match his hat and long gloves of the same color that laced up the backs from knuckles almost to elbow. His pants were wide-legged and a warm slate, with an almost salmon-pink strip of ovals embroidered near the bottom of each leg. He also had a pair of shoes (worn almost clear through) and fur leg-wraps like his sister, but he'd left those and the gloves off.

It was his _sword_ that had particularly caught Elazul's attention while the two Jumi had waited for their hosts to finish washing up. A massive beast made of Ishe platinum, the pommel-nut made from a Sun Crystal came just about to where Xan's shoulder would be. The leather wrapping the hilt was worn to practically nothing, the wire bindings rubbed smooth from countless battles.

Yet the blade itself showed barely a nick or scratch. Instead, faint patterns rippled over the surface and gathered in the deep blood-channel that had been inlaid with Vizel gold. It leaned against the wall by the front door with a presence like a living thing. Mana, but Xan had even patted the thing when he'd walked in. The sheath, freshly oiled and set out to dry, was rigged for a behind-the-shoulder carry and showed definite signs of needing repairs.

"Yeah, I do an overhaul of my kit every time I come home," Xan said when Elazul mentioned it. Bud and Lisa had come in some time before Rei and Xan had finished monopolizing the bathroom—Bud had immediately gone on the defensive and had done his best to politely show the Jumi Knight that he was Not Welcome and should go home…wherever that was. Lisa had merely curtsied and gone to make more tea. "Have to. All the tussles I get into while I'm wandering wears all but my toughest stuff out."

Rei snorted into her teacup, glancing sidelong at Elazul across the table. "You complained about having to fight big monsters whenever you're with me, whether we go looking or not. With Xan, it's never 'or not'."

The Jumi Knight shuddered theatrically. "Right," he decided, "no going on trips with you, sir." That won him laughs all 'round, except from a sulking Bud. Rei had spotted his antics the second she'd come out in her normal gear and had immediately drawn him aside. Neither Pearl or Elazul had heard what was said, but Pearl had quietly offered the idea that it had been the 'If You Can't Say Anything Nice' rule since the Elf boy was now grimly silent.

The afternoon progressed, with Xan and Elazul chatting with Rei while Pearl, Lisa, and Bud (who tolerated the absent-minded Jumi girl) made dinner. Topics ranged from weapons, fighting techniques, who served better food in which restaurants, and all the way down to Xan's latest adventures which hadn't been put into letters yet.

Xan finally recounted an exploration trip into the Ulkan mines to see if the claims of good materials being found there were true or not. He had the entire group in stitches by the time he ended with, "So there's Polkiehl just standing there in front of this clockwork chest that kept popping out all these different-sized gold stars, doing his damnedest to sing this heroic ballad of the deeds of Watts. Watts is this shrimpy guy about Duelle's height that wears this big freakin' helmet like those old Fieg sailors. Which is pretty much all poor Polkiehl can sing about, is that damned helmet. He's stuck finishing the song with 'Watts, our Watts…he…hasn't really done all that much'!"

After dinner, Rei finally got to open presents. Bud and Lisa had fetched most of those from Rei's closest friends in Domina—which was why they'd been gone when Elazul and Pearl had arrived. For the most part it was the usual sort of knick-knacks one could expect from farmers and tradesmen; seeds, items for blacksmithing, her herbistry, and the like. She especially liked the small pouch of spiny seeds that Granny Lobelia had sent her.

Bud and Lisa had collaborated to make her a self-heating cook-pot for her trips; a pretty piece of enchantment, especially considering that individually, the twins could hope to try something like this alone by next year.

Xan handed her a pouch that clinked; she lit up and poured the contents into a shining heap on the table to reveal over a dozen gold Elemental coins, at least two from every one, from Shade to Wisp.

But Elazul and Pearl had topped them all. Rei was puzzled when Pearl had handed her a package the size of her two fists, wrapped entirely in layers of the softest, most supple leather Rei had ever felt, but opened it readily. Her jaw nearly hit the floor when a cluster of purple spires were revealed, casting violet-tinted rainbows even in the lamplight. With reverence she lifted the cluster out of its nest and raised it to the light, wonder softening her expression. "I've never seen anything like this…"

"They're dusk crystals," Pearl told her softly, delighted with the reaction to their gift. "Some people used to say that the Jumi were born from stones like these, but that's nonsense. These were born from Jumi…" She trailed off, discovering that she had Rei's undivided attention.

There were rummaging sounds from the swinging door of the library, Xan calling for her to wait a moment, he needed one of the half-empty books he'd left here a while ago and something to write with and "When was the last time you organized in here, woman?! It's a bloody Rabite nest!"

Rei calmly retorted that she'd organized in there last year and that the books he was looking for were on the third shelf of the bookcase nearest the door. Xan let out a small shout of triumph and emerged from his sister's study juggling a bottle of ink, a wooden pen, and a leather-bound book dyed a dark brown. His hood-cap was slightly askew as he plunked the book open on the table and himself in a chair; dipping the pen nib into the ink, he looked over at Pearl after a paragraph lay drying on the page.

"Keep going."

"Keep going?" she squeaked, going pale.

Xan nodded, utterly serious. "Do you know how many stories from the Jumi there are out there for everyone? The ones I've collected over the last _eight years_ fill precisely half a book _if_ I use elaborate language and the old Empiric spelling. I've never heard anything about stones being born from Jumi or vice versa. So,_keep going_."

Pearl glanced over at Elazul; her Knight shrugged, hardly caring if his people's stories were heard by other ears. Face once again resuming a bright pink hue, Pearl did as Xan eagerly bid her and told him about how, when the Jumi had lived in their city, the collective aura of over a thousand cores had seeped into stone and sand. She told about the elusive cave systems and the fantastically-colored dunes that had been created by that power; dusk crystals were the least of the gems that were once the Jumi's treasure and the only ones that could still be found. And even that was only if you knew where to look.

She went on after that, retelling an old, old Jumi legend that said that the first of their kind had been born from the earth itself, given life by one of the Elemental Spirits, one of the Flammies, or the Mana Goddess herself. There were versions for each and Pearl wasn't about to try and choose one when all could be right.

Rei listened to it all, rapt, while the only other sounds were the fire and the dry scratchings of Xan's dancing pen.

Elazul chipped in next with a tale about one of the Knight of Malachite, Malachi, and how he fought against Anuelle nearly a thousand years ago to save a newly-formed city and the love of his life. He didn't realize the effect the story was having on his audience until Rei made a small, grieving noise and fled the room into the twilight. Startled, Elazul stopped gazing meditatively at his hands and half-rose. Xan's headshake stopped him: the sprite cleaned his pen before he followed after his sister at a calmer pace.

He patted Elazul's shoulder on the way out, offering him something that was close kin to a smile. "Rei's a tough little cat, 'Lazul. She won't cry for the Jumi in a tale. Let me go get her calmed down, then you can finish. I want the rest of the tale."

Xan didn't have to look for Rei to find her, all he did was amble down the path into the orchard. Rei was leaning against Trent with her head bowed to his rough bark, breathing slow and deep. "I know it's a story," she said as Xan came up behind her. "I know that nothing I can do can change the past, that those people are dead and dust. But goddess strike it, Xan, haven't the Jumi suffered_enough_?"

Her brother wrapped her in a hug from behind and rested his chin on her shoulder. "You know my answer to that, Rei. I've read the history books too. But we can't help the ones that are still living if we cry. You know that, too."

For a long moment, the knife-fighter leaned into the taller male's embrace, breath going out in a long sigh. "I'll be fine," she said at last in a firm voice. "I won't cry, but I can't listen to the rest of that story. You go inside and coax the rest out of 'Lazul; you'll have to persuade him, now, since he'll be guilt-tripping about me."

"You sure?"

"Yeah. I have to feed the monsters, anyway, it's my turn. G'wan."

Xan obediently released her after a brief squeeze and disappeared back into the house. Rei took a few more deeps breaths, turning her face up to the growing darkness and the leaves that were still throwing velvet shadows across the ground. She stayed that way for a minute or so more, then turned and went up the path towards the monster barn. Trent watched her go with serious eyes.

———

Late that night, the house was quiet. Rei and Xan had somehow convinced the Jumi to stay the night. Bud, Lisa, and Rei got to keep their beds, Pearl got the padded bench, and the two men got the floor downstairs. Elazul was lying in the bedroll Rei had lent him, breathing in her scent that was all over the thing and staring up at the ceiling.

Cloth rustled; Xan was a dark shadow against the fire at his back when he sat up. "I know you're awake," he said quietly. Elazul saw no reason to deny it so he sat up as well, gazing at Xan steadily. "I wanted to talk to you without Rei hearing. C'mon."

Wrapping his blanket around his shoulders, Xan rose and padded barefoot for the door. Elazul followed, brain still caught in that between state of being wired and trying to gear down for sleeping. The earthy, slightly spicy scent of Rei on the blanket he'd wrapped around him in unthinking imitation wasn't helping him think clearly, either.

The earth of the path was cool under their bare feet as the two men walked around the back of the house and into the main room of the workshops. Above them hung a chandelier woven out of the roots of the dead tree crowning the hillock, hung with grape-clusters of glowstone.

Xan shut the door behind them and went to sit on the edge of the stone-lined, low well at the back of the room. Facing the exit, the smithy lay on his right, the instruments workshop on his left. Elazul was the subject of an incredibly intense scrutiny for any time of the day, let alone one o'clock in the morning. Some part of the Knight was worried that Xan might actually be the jewel hunter, but the rest of him dismissed it, knowing that Sandra wouldn't come so close to the turf of a woman who wanted her very dead.

And even if Sandra was pretending to be Xan, what would she kill him with? Xan wasn't wearing anything but that blanket and a clean set of the no-color trousers he'd been in when the two had first met this afternoon.

So Elazul huddled in his blanket, trying not to simply fall asleep where he stood. Xan gave him a sympathetic smile, then sobered. "Listen, Elazul. I just wanted to know your intentions involving my sister."

Elazul blinked. Blinked again. "I'm sorry, what?"

"I want to know your intentions involving my sister," Xan repeated patiently. "Do you love her? Are you planning on breaking her heart?"

The Knight just blinked at him for a third time, brain still trying to process what Xan just said. Intentions? Heart? Bwuh? Finally he gave up, feeling like a little creature inside his head had just held up a giant sign with a question mark on it.

Xan rubbed the back of his neck, having the grace to look sheepish. "Look, I know it's late, an' I'm sorry I took you off guard like that. How about this: what do you feel for Rei? Take your time."

Elazul's mind beast scampered off; it knew where _those_ were. Honestly, someone trying to get him to think at one in the morning… "I have the utmost respect for Rei as a fighter, and she is my dearest friend."

Xan nodded. "Okay. Here's one a little harder. Do you love her?"

Adrenaline suddenly zinged through Elazul's blood, bringing him back to alertness so fast he was left with a metaphysical whiplash. "Define 'love'."

The sword fighter had a half-serious grin on his face now. "That woke you up. Okay. Do you have romantic feelings for my sister? 'Cause from where I'm standing, you two are acting like every single new couple I've seen in my travels when they're still in that walking-on-eggshells stage."

In response, Elazul turned and began lightly thumping his head against the wall. Xan let him do it for a few heartbeats, then called his name in a tone that held the first hints of warning. Clutching the blanket to him with one hand, Elazul raked through his hair with his fingers, eyes closed. "I'm not certain how to put this without you hitting me," he said at last.

He was promised, "Just spit it out. I won't hit you unless you _really_ stick your foot in it."

Elazul finger-combed his hair again, working his thoughts into a coherent pattern that his tongue could deal with when his brain had only just woken up. "Tell me what you know about Jumi. The basics," he added hastily, remembering earlier this evening.

"The Jumi are a race of people whose lives are entwined with the stone embedded in their chests, over their sternums," Xan replied easily. "If that stone or 'core' is removed, the Jumi dies. They are split into two classes, which are further divided into 'strata', levels based on the clarity of their cores and value of their signature stones, the highest of which is the Clarius, the lowest is Clod. The two base classes are Knight and Guardian. The Knights are the protectors of and fighters for the Guardians, who in turn are supposed to care for and heal their Knight if he or she is injured. But that was before the War for the Mana Stones, when your people still had their healing tears."

"That's good enough," Elazul told him, letting Xan know that he could stop. "You know that I'm a Knight. Please understand that it means that protection and proud servitude have been bred into my class for thousands of years. Keeping someone safe isn't just a duty, it's a need very strongly rooted in love. The more we love someone, the more we feel the need to protect them whether _they_ need it or not.

"There's a hunter after every Jumi core she can get her hands on, including those few of us who are still alive. I've tried my damnedest to keep Rei at a certain distance because of that. You can see how well that's worked," he added dryly, gesturing around him to indicate his presence in Rei's home. "She's coming very close to becoming as dear to me as Pearl, and I do not say that lightly. I don't want her to turn to stone if Sandra takes one of us."

"So you do love her."

Sleep deprivation was the only thing that let Elazul speak bluntly. "More with every time I see her." And Mana, but he was likely going to regret saying it later. "But don't you understand? I _can't_ love her. I put her in more danger with every trip I take with her. If she gets hurt because of me…I don't know if I could stand it."

Xan rubbed his hand over his mouth, hiding a regretful smile. "'Laz, I hate to tell you this, but you're stuck, you really are."

"I know. I can't leave, and she can't stay."

"That's not what I meant," Xan corrected, waving. "What I'm saying is, it's too late to try and keep her out. The fact that you're here is proof enough of that."

Elazul stared at him in confusion. "What?"

Rei's brother leaned forward on the well-edge, resting his elbows on his knees, all trace of humor erased from him. "There's something about our clan that Rei doesn't know, and please don't tell her. I only know because our mother had foretelling dreams and told me before they left that last time. There's been magic laid into our family since before the Mana Tree burned to ashes. We burn brighter because of it, drawing others closer to us. But there's a price as there always is. We are geas-bound to help any in need that we come across; moreso if they _ask_ for aid. You're aware of that part."

Xan leaned forward even more, green eyes glowing strangely in the lamplight. "But what you _didn't_ know is that it's why people are so drawn to us. We need strong people to bond to, to keep us from fading. Sibling, beloved, best friend, it doesn't matter so long as we have even one to keep our spirits kindled. But there are fewer every year who can withstand the kind of spiritual fire my family burns with. So our magic compensates by spreading the need into smaller, thinner links among more people and pulling harder at those we can bond with. And it pulls _us_, too, especially if we're in distress. We'll go straight to the strongest nearby bonded unless we deliberately keep busy."

Elazul abruptly remembered that day in Domina months ago, when Rei had come into the pub looking like hell. He'd felt the need to stay around town for almost a week before that without ever figuring out why. Now he knew.

Her brother was nodding his head as though he could read the thoughts in blue eyes. "I see you understand what I'm talking about. It isn't that you can't keep Rei away from you, 'Laz, it's that the magic won't let you. So…let her love you as much as you love her. You're rarer that you can even guess."

Not knowing what to say to that, Elazul stood silent, gazing at a spot on the far wall like it would give him answers. Xan hopped off his barrel and hiked his blanket back up around his shoulders, padding silently for the door. He paused, then looked over his shoulder.

"I almost forgot." Before Elazul can even process that Xan had moved, a callused hand had grabbed him by the chin and hauled his head down until blue stared into fierce green. "Listen to me _very_ carefully, Elazul, Knight of Lapis Lazuli. What I told you earlier tonight is true: Rei will not cry for a person that has been lost to the Underworld for an age. But she _would_ cry for you or Pearl if one of you dies. So I am placing you under an obligation you are not allowed to refuse. You are to keep yourself and your Pearl alive, no matter what. Even if it's another Jumi's life that is lost because of it. Because if she cries because of you—and I do mean _you _in particular, Elazul—and I lose her? I will personally hunt your ass down in the Underworld and find out if a spirit can die twice."

Elazul rubbed his chin as he followed Xan out, wondering if he had been meant to feel oddly reassured by that very serious threat.

———————————————


	12. Huntin' Du'Cate

I'm bored, waiting for #20 of Naruto Shippuden to finish downloading. Which is good for you, since it's gotten me to post another extra chapter. Anybody been keeping up with Avatar?

———

Rei lifted her hair away from the back of her neck and fanned at herself with a hand, trying to circulate some air to her face. The problem was, the air was so humid that sweat didn't want to evaporate, leaving Rei mildly cranky in the moderate heat.

It's been a week since her birthday. Xan had gone off on more adventures, swearing that he'd be home in time to celebrate the winter solstice with her in a couple of months. Elazul and Pearl had disappeared somewhere and hadn't written since. She was getting rather worried about them, what with the distracted way Elazul had looked when they'd left. But she hadn't gotten any bad feelings, so she'd have to suppose that they were alright.

"Geez, it's like a greenhouse in here," Bud complained at her heels, flapping his tunic-front to cool himself off. "Are you _sure_ there's a Wisdom here?"

"That's what the trader said," Rei replied. " 'A great beast, sittin' regal as y' please on a stone chair out in the Jungle.' "

"At least Pokiehl had the sense to stay where it's comfy," grumbled her apprentice. Rei just rolled her eyes and kept walking. They were cutting through the Jungle on the way home from the Ulkan Mines after Rei had brought Bud to see the famous Wisdom bard. The bird-man had calmly told the young Elf, _"The Goddess is always doing her best to help us. All we need to do is find out what she's done for us."_

Which in Rei's opinion meant a whole lot of nothing, but that's probably why she wasn't a Wisdom.

They'd gotten a bit sidetracked when they were there when Watts had asked Rei to bring back his hammer, if she spotted it. She'd promised, and had gone straight to the little blue-and-yellow sign near the entrance to the mines that had said 'Dudbear Express'. The Dudbear that had been standing by the sign did something that had made them shrink to pocket-size and rushed off, leaving them properly-sized in the entrance to the Dudbear headquarters one level down. Dudbears were always picking up things, Rei explained as she and Bud had dusted themselves off. It stood to reason that the hammer had gotten picked up by one of them.

Bud had accepted this bit of sage advice and followed his teacher into the headquarters, where they'd found two penguin pirates in the process of dog-napping Roger's pet and the religious icon for the Diggers, Putty the dog. The two birds had rushed past them while Rei was off-guard, leaving a few semi-conscious Dudbears on the floor, the poor dog howling his distress as he was carried off.

Moments later Roger himself had rushed in, wearing his furry hat and furry breechclout, and had immediately started interrogating the awakening Dubears. "Was that His Graciousness Putty crying for help!.?"

"Dub!" said one 'bear.

"Then those penguins that just passed us made of with His Graciousness!.?"

"Dub!" confirmed another.

Roger growled and shook his fists at the ceiling. "They'll pay for this!" He'd then whirled on Rei and Bud, who were still standing in the doorway and trying not to laugh at hearing a dog called 'His Graciousness'. "You there! You're somewhat responsible for this, too! Go find his Graciousness, Lord Putty!.!"

Aware of his temper, Rei didn't bother making him say 'please'. She'd merely walked over to the fireplace, scooped up the soot-marked blacksmithing hammer lying on the rug next to it, and walked back out again.

They'd returned the hammer, discovering that Xan's description of Watts as 'short, big-mouthed, and forgetful as hell' was entirely accurate. The blacksmith had already forgotten that he'd asked them to find his hammer, and promptly had stuck his foot in his mouth. Rei had left feeling decidedly amused.

Voices came from up ahead, jerking Rei back to the present and out of the thoughts of nice, cool, dry Ulkan. "Pwease wisten up! This is your wucky day."

Stepping around a turn in the foliage-lined path, Rei and Bud came upon a strange trio: a long-legged rabbit man dressed in a sprinter's shorts, tank-top, and sneakers (all purple); a large, heavy-set human man with a large red nose, wearing heavy wooden _geta_ sandals and a knee-length tunic roughly made from hide; and a small manikin with black button eyes and a nose like a grape, dressed in a neat outfit of loose trousers gathered at the ankle, a tucked-in shirt, and a short cloak, all of it blue. The small being also wore a blue cap on his shoulder-length brown hair. It was he that was speaking.

"You go catch a Du'Cate and bwing it's tail back…And what'll happen?"

The largest of the three scratched at his scalp, fingers disappearing under his fur-lined leather hat. "Duh…I dunno."

"Geez!" grumbled the rabbit-man in disgust. "You just don't get it, do ya?"

"Duh…So what happens?"

Rabbit-man grinned, a sharp expression that bared his teeth at the small manikin. "He'll cancel all our debt for us. Ain't that right, Mr. Fuddy-duddy?"

Offended, the little creature crossed his arms over his chest and told the other firmly, "I am not Mr. Fuddy-duddy! Pwease addwess me as Sotherbee! And your debt will not be compwetewy cancelled, either! The 10,000,000 Wucre-debt will be weduced to 9,980,000 Wucre!"

The large man looked puzzled. "Duh, how come we owe you so much money? We're just housecleaners at your boss' mansion!"

"You just don't get it, do you? Mr. Fuddy-duddy cheated us." No need to guess who that was.

Sotherbee looked even more offended, putting his hands on his hips and frowning at them both. "I did not cheat you! You must pay for all the things you bwoke!"

Rabbit-man sighed and shrugged in mock-resignation. "Ah, well…Toil, says the proverb, is the sire of fame."

"Uh, what's that mean?" the big man wanted to know.

His companion whirled, dropping into a runner's crouch and grinning wickedly up at the human. "You catch five hundred Du'Cates, and your debt's cancelled!" he yelled, taking off in an impossible cloud of dust.

Brightening, the human shouted, "Duh…Hey! That's easy!" and powered off after the rabbit, leaving Sotherbee to wait for them at the entrance to the Jungle.

The little man pouted, kicking a little at the plant-covered path. "…My name is not Mr. Fuddy-duddy!" he mumbled unhappily.

"It was Sotherbee, wasn't it?" Rei prompted lightly, walking up with Bud in place at her heels. The Elf murmured to his teacher under his breath that the blue-clad guy looked like he was an animated doll, getting a hand gently placed over his mouth for his observation.

Addressed correctly, Sotherbee brightened. "Hewwo! Are you going somewhere?"

"Just thought we'd take a trip through the Jungle on our way home," Rei replied, feeling cheerful again despite the warmth of the air.

"I'll weward you 20,000 Wucre for each Du'Cate tail you bwing me!" Sotherbee promised her eagerly. "They're a weal wawety!"

"What do you think, Bud?" Rei asked, taking her hand away from her student's mouth. He grinned up at her.

"Sounds like a challenge to me, Master Rei!"

Sotherbee gave them a happy smile and asked if they were student and teacher. Rei chuckled and admitted that such was the case before she turned and shooed Bud ahead of her through the arch that marked the entrance to the heart of the Jungle. Only to run back a moment later at a surprised exclamation from the tiny fellow they'd left behind.

A pink, ball-shaped creature with a nest on its head was running madly about the wide place on the path, with Sotherbee frantically pattering after it. "It's a Wiwipea!" the manikin called to them. "Just one will fetch 100,000 Wucre! Catch it for me, and I'll weward you handsomewy!"

Bud obediently began chasing after the round creature, only to notice that Rei had suddenly turned clumsy, getting in Sotherbee's way a half-dozen times before the Lilipea ran to safety into the jungle.

"Oh, oh no!" cried Sotherbee, disconsolately plopping down on the ground. "There was a Wiwipea right here!! But it got away!"

"I'm sorry I couldn't catch it for you, Mr. Sotherbee," apologized Rei, sounding sincere enough, even to Bud. "If I find one in there I'll try and bring it back, okay?" Sniffling, the doll-like Sotherbee looked up at Rei and nodded, teary-eyed. She patted him on the head and once again shooed Bud ahead of her into the deeper jungle growth.

After he was certain that they were alone and out of earshot, Bud looked up at his teacher and asked, "So what was that about? You coulda caught that thing, easy."

Rei ruffled his hair and gave him a lopsided smile. "Don't bother the Lilipeas, Bud. They're honest, hardworking beings who deserve what peace and quiet they can get."

"How do you know?"

The new smile she gave him this time was decidedly sharper. "When I'm certain that it won't come to harm from explosions and the like, I'll show you one of the prizes of my family's library: Selva's journal from the Wars."

Bud's jaw dropped. "_Selva_? Selva _of the Four Winds_, Selva? _That_ Selva?.?"

"Yup."

"Where did you find a Wisdom's journal?.?"

Rei nudged him into moving again, still wearing that sharp smile. "One of my great-great-lots-of-great-uncles was a sub-commander in the war over the Eyes of Flame. He was one of the few sprites that didn't really have a side, but he didn't want the mages chasing after Anuella's level of power, either. After the Battle of Geimaswald he got to talk to Selva, who gave him the journal and advised him to go home to the girl that was waiting for him. My great-uncle's mother didn't raise a fool; he followed that advice and lived a long, happy life as a traveling merchant. Oh, beg your pardon," she said suddenly to thin air, steering Bud back a step or two and around. "Didn't mean to bump into you."

Bud looked from her to the empty space and back. "Master Rei, who're you talkin' to?"

She glanced down at him, puzzled for a moment, then remembered. "Ah, I forgot. You never did get a spell to see faeries, did you? I'll have talk to Grandfather Tote about that."

"Faeries?"

"Mmh. We bumped into one back there; she was very polite. Told me that this area is closest to the Land of Faeries, and that we should be careful not to get lost. I guess since you didn't see her, you didn't appear as a threat."

Bud scuffed the ground as he walked, disappointed that he couldn't be as cool as his teacher and see faeries. He'd always wanted to see one, and now he was stuck missing out again. Darn it! Then he heard a tiny squeak and glanced around; finally spotting a bush that had a broad leaf shaking a bit in a non-existent breeze. Dark, shining eyes peeked at him for a moment; a tiny hand wearing a bracelet of flower-petals waved, then disappeared. Bud suddenly felt better.

Rei tapped him on the shoulder, distracting him from thoughts of magical winged people, and pointed to the path ahead. They'd taken a turn or two, nothing major, and the foliage, while denser, couldn't hide the ball of soft pink sitting at the edge of the trail. "And that, Bud," Rei murmured as they approached the Lilipea, "is why you show respect to everyone you meet. I have the feeling we've earned ourselves a guide. Good day," she added, raising her voice to its normal level. "Can you show us to where we need to go?"

"Pwa," replied the Lilipea, sounding cheerful. It stood up, then pattered off, pausing after a few yards to make sure they were following.

Bud grinned and murmured, "Cool," as he and his teacher trailed after the Lilipea.

———

About fifteen minutes later the Lilipea led them to a wide clearing with a tuba-shaped plant in the middle. They'd seen the rabbit-man run by earlier, snickering about a path that 'that blockhead' probably couldn't find. Bud watched as Rei thwacked a monster that had been guarding the clearing into vanishing, then jumped nearly a foot as a gray-feathered, purple-and-copper-clad penguin bounded into the clearing without warning.

"Hi there," she greeted, voice bright and musical. "I'll cast a spell on you so you won't get lost."

Rei hastily backed up, waving her hands. "That won't be—ack!" She batted irritably at the eye-shapes that danced for a heartbeat around her, frowning at the penguin. "We have a guide, we didn't need a spell!"

The penguin tilted her head, disconcerted. "Oh. Sorry. Most travelers through here are lost in a second or two. I'll ask first, next time."

"Thank you." Bud recognized his cue and took to his master's heels as she stalked out of the clearing, muttering under her breath about how all penguins were the same—hopeless. Almost ten minutes later the two travelers spotted the big human from before running noisily up a trail. The Lilipea pointed in the direction he went in and told them, "Pwa."

"Follow him?" Rei guessed, and was rewarded with a nod. "Okay. Thank you for your help."

"Yeah, thanks," echoed Bud, bobbing his head in an abbreviated bow. The Lilipea touched the edge of the nest on its' head politely, then pattered off, presumably towards home.

Rei watched it go for a moment, curiosity lighting her eyes. "I'm glad it knew the way around, but I'm wondering what a Lilipea was doing here, anyway. They're supposed to live in the White Forest by Norn Peaks." Her apprentice shrugged; he couldn't get his potion lessons to stop fizzing (and sometimes energetically exploding). Understanding the motives of a friendly magical construct was, as yet, beyond his skills. So he and his teacher walked in companionable silence up the trail.

Topping the head-level bump in the path, they found not only the human, but the rabbit-man as well, talking about a large animal back where the rabbit-man had just come from. The human immediately rushed off—in the wrong direction, vanishing down a fork in the trail in a heartbeat.

"Not that way!" yelled the rabbit-man in exasperation. "Listen to me for once!"

"Where'd he go?" Bud asked in curiosity, peering down the trail now scatted with crushed foliage.

"Hamson went into the Faeries' territory," grumped the runner. "Don't go in, or you'll be sent back to the entrance."

Rei smiled at him. "Thanks for the warning. I'm Rei, this is Bud."

"I'm Skippy, and that big idiot was Hamson. Go check that big animal out back there. It's _huge_." And Skippy jerked a thumb back the way he'd come.

Bud lifted his head in confidence. "If it isn't as big as the flower-monster we found in Ulkan Mines, then it isn't huge."

"Smart-ass kid ya got there, Rei. Better do something about that nose of his before it rains and he drowns."

"Hey!"

"Yes, yes," Rei sighed, pushing Bud past Skippy and up a path made of stone bricks that had thick tufts of grass . "Less bickering, more exploring."

"Check it out!" Bud breathed in awe as they entered a wide clearing that had obviously once been paved. Sprawled regally on the remains of an old carved throne was a great, red-furred, wolfish beast. Antlers like a young deer's branched out from behind goat-like ears; white fur traced paths on the underside of the heavy muzzle, his belly, and the toes on his paws. A light-green crest bushed from the massive head and ran out of sight down the creature's back. "It's Rosiotti!"

Standing beside the throne was another grey-feathered penguin in purple and gold. The thin head turned when the two travelers entered, and then the male penguin ducked his head shyly. "Uh, my name is Roane," he said, introducing himself. "My sister Selkie went to check why the Faeries have been acting weird. She went to the Courtyard of Rain, but she might be hiding elsewhere now. Um, could you go looking for her after you catch Du'Cate?"

"We already met her," Rei sighed, approaching. "At the Courtyard, or whatever it was you called it. But I'll talk to her the next chance I get."

"Thanks," Roane told her gratefully.

Bud was staring in fascination at Rosiotti, who was gazing in mild interest back. The child was obviously suppressing an urge to start chattering questions at him, and instead kept himself to his usual introduction of, "I'm Bud! I came to listen to the Wisdoms to become a great wizard!"

Rosiotti's massive head lifted, and a rumbling voice not terribly unlike Gaeus' came flowing from between deadly fangs. "Hello, Bud. The air is filled with Mana energy. Empty your heart of any thoughts, and feel its flow."

Bud was definitely awed as he thanked the Lord of Beasts, the young Elf scampering back to the side of his teacher as Rosiotti's head turned to look at Rei. "Du'Cate has been causing trouble around here lately," he rumbled. "Try working with others to catch him."

"As you suggest," Rei replied, bowing a little to him. "Come on, Bud, we've work to do. Good day, Rosiotti, Roane." And she led her apprentice from the ruins of Rosiotti's court.

It took them the better part of an hour for Rei and Bud to hunt down Skippy and Hamson; for each Rei suggested that they work together without mentioning the fourth member of the Du'Cate-hunting adventure party. Skippy told them that he'd seen the elusive beast many times, but that there was no was he would be able to catch him by himself. When Rei offered Rosiotti's suggestion to him, the rabbit-man readily agreed and took off, promising to corner him in.

Hamson was just as amenable, having discovered how difficult Du'cate was to even locate. Until Skippy had said he'd seen the beast, Rei had been wondering if they'd been sent on a wild goose chase. After Hamson took off, Rei led Bud at a sprint through the thick jungle back towards Rosiotti, both Skippy and Hamson racing past them just as they were nearing the entrance to the Wisdom's home.

Rei followed them, slowing when they disappeared after going through a break in the undergrowth just before the rise that led to the broken-stone path. Beyond was another trail, filled with wide spots and monsters. Bud discovered how vicious his teacher could be when a teddy-bear like creature in what looked like a tomato tried to attach itself to his head—she hacked it to pieces in less than a second. They also encountered what looked like walking corpses, but Rei assured him that, while they were rather disgusting, they weren't actually dead unless you killed them.

Then the jungle broke open around them, leaving the two adventurers standing on the bank of a clear-water spring, with a breath-taking view of an open space holding several enormous flowers framed by the trunks and branches of high-rising fruit trees. Skippy and Hamson were nowhere in sight.

And then the ground began to rumble.

"Damn," swore the knife-fighter, pushing Bud back to keep him from being trampled by the giant ape that dashed into the clearing. It was close to the size of the Du'Inke she'd once fought with Elazul, if not a bit bigger. His fur was cleaner, being an almost soft, dark rose-pink, and his shoes were in much better shape. He screamed at the two invading his territory, and bounded up to grab onto the thick branches of the trees above him.

"Get ready to run around like mad," Rei warned Bud quietly, her knives out and gleaming. Her warning was well timed as, one-handed, the giant ape grabbed one of the human-sized fruits hanging amidst the leaves and chucked it at them. It bounced off the ground and into the trees beyond them; the next one aimed straight at Rei, who slashed it to pieces with her knives.

The knife-fighter, in return, leaped up a tree-trunk and used it to launch herself at Du'Cate while Bud used a flute to summon Aura, the Elemental of Light. The little spirit lit the clearing up like noon in the desert, blinding Du'Cate and doing a respectable bit of damage. Rei did even more when she lit into the beast with her knives.

Du'Cate fell quickly under their combined attacks, tumbling to the ground when he lost his grip. Bud yelped when the ground shook again, Rei snatching him up and holding him on her shoulders as a flood of much-smaller apes rushed through and carried their leader off. Before their dust cloud settled, Skippy and Hamson ran into the clearing, looking rather sheepish.

"You know," Skippy told Hamson thoughtfully, "you and me sure don't get along…"

"Uh…But we're both wimps!" finished Hamson, scratching at the back of his neck.

"Can't do a thing when we need to!" agreed the rabbit-man, ignoring Rei and Bud as they picked up large blue crystals that had appeared when the many feet of the little du'cate had swept the undergrowth away.

———

The sun was about halfway down the sky when the rag-tag group made it back to Sotherbee, Bud once again being carried on his teacher's back. He half-dozed there, occasionally blinking owlishly at his surroundings.

"Thank you for your coopewation, all!" Sotherbee told them, Hamson letting out a rousing yell and waking Bud a little from his stupor.

"Yeah, yeah, let's go," Skippy said in irritation.

"And I thank you for helping us out!" Sotherbee continued, turning to Rei with a smile. She gave him a half-grin and shrugged as best she could with a boy on her back. "Here is five hundwed Wucre."

"Nah, that's okay," Rei declined as she gently pushed the small hand with the pouch towards the other two Du'Cate hunters. "Give it to those two for their debt. We did it for the challenge."

"How genewous! Hamson and Skippy, fowwow this person's example!" Sotherbee beamed at Rei. "I wike people wike you. Pwease take this." This time, Rei didn't refuse when the small manikin offered her a few bars of Foresena iron. This was far too useful in her forge for her to pass by—and she needed some to replace the bar she'd destroyed in that temper fit a couple of months ago.

"Hey, that's not nice," Skippy complained to Sotherbee.

He was ignored. "Alwight then, wet's head for home. Ta wa wa." The rest watched in silence for a moment as the blue-clad fellow started to skip off.

"Uh…ta la la?" Hammy echoed uncertainly.

Skippy pumped a fist triumphantly into the air. "We're movin' up in the world!"

Rei watched them go, bemused, before she shook her head, jiggled Bud a little to get them both a little more comfortable, and went home. She was curious about something…

———————

Elazul's distraction will be explained at a later date, when he and Pearl come back into the story. It has something to do with that late-night conversation, but not quite in the way that you think.

I love Sotherbee. He's so darn cute.

_Geta_ sandals are the clunky wooden sandals you sometimes see men in anime wearing, usually during the festival episodes where they're in traditional festival garb. Also the preferred footwear of the much-beloved and totally kick-ass Samurai Jack.


	13. Siren Song, Whispering Forest

**Lady Icicle: **Thank you, and welcome!

**Shadow's Rage: **Aww…_—blushes—_ I _have_ left plotholes before in some of my other stories. The amount of change in my Yu Yu Hakusho fics means that one of these days I really need to go and rewrite the first two. Rereading my Ranma fic just makes me wince. I think the only thing saving this one from a similar Swiss-cheesy fate is that I reread this one often, so I don't forget nearly as much. (I had loads of fun with ch. 11. The whole thing just made me snicker while I was writing it.)

**Tiamat42:** Such has been the theory in a few of the fics in this corner of ffnet. (The petrification thing, not the selling of.) And I _like_ Xan's hat. He can't be a Smurf because it's not white and he's not four inches tall and blue. Yes, I really liked how 11 turned out. It evolved from how I originally planned it, but oh, well. _—laughs—_ I loved your second review, by the way!

**Echidna:** Ooh, another new reviewer! Welcome, welcome and thank you!

**VrtraHex:**And a third newcomer? Sugoi yo! Thank you! I do worry sometimes that I'm pulling a Tolkein and dumping too much description on you all—don't get me wrong, I love The Hobbit, but wow, he's long-winded everywhere else…—but I'm glad to hear that it's working out nicely.

In case anyone is wondering, the reasons why I post replies here even though most reviews, if not all, are signed, are because this way, I know who I've replied to, how I replied, and everyone likes seeing their name in print, no?

Since both these events are so short, I combined them into one slightly-longer-than-average chapter. But don't worry. We're about to plunge into the Dragon Arc, which means more plot and longer chapters. And for those of you who were waiting for the appearance of a certain blond knight…Ta-da! Today is your day! Though you might not like just how badly Rei reacts to him……

———————

Bud and Lisa were mildly concerned: Rei had been acting unusually calm for the past few days, ever since that trip to the Jungle. Nip didn't seem bothered by, it, though, which was the only reason the twins were 'mildly' concerned, rather than actually worried. Finally, though, Rei noticed their anxiety and explained that she'd just tried what Rosiotti had told Bud and that it was incredibly relaxing.

"You should really try it," she told them serenely. "This 'clearing your mind of thoughts' thing helps me unwind like nothing else, especially near Trent. The Mana flows in the orchard are especially nice."

She then informed the Elf twins that she was due at Lumina to meet with Monique the lamp-maker and that she'd be back in a couple of days. Bud complained, Lisa agreed to keep an eye on him while they practiced, and off Rei went.

This time she had no trouble finding the town blanketed in eternal twilight, but Monique wasn't there when Rei arrived at the shop. Curious, Rei did a quick search around the neighborhood and was told by one of the other shopkeepers that Monique had gone on vacation at Polpota Harbor. Feeling slightly irritated that her friend hadn't even sent a note, Rei decided to explore the rest of Lumina.

She wove through the narrow streets back the way she'd come, getting a drink at the tavern 'Mischievous Spirits' and heading for a little, nearly-invisible street on the far side of it. It opened up into a residential district…which was filled with imperial soldiers of low enough rank that none of them had enamel on their armor.

"Where the heck is the lamp shop?" demanded one in frustration. "The houses are all empty!"

A second complained, "Who built such a strange town?", to which a third agreed with, "Man, it's not even funny!"

"Well, actually, mages built the town," Rei commented warily as she approached. "Then they got driven out by the wars and the lack of sunlight. What's going on?"

The first soldier turned, obviously glad that someone was here who showed some sense. "Our comrades' ship was sunk," he explained, "and some said they heard a strange voice! I think it was a mermaid's doing."

"Sirens are the ones known for sinking ships," corrected soldier number two. "I think Monique of the lamp shop could be the one."

"I gotta catch SOMEONE to calm down!" burst out the third. "Where is the darn lamp shop, anyway?'!"

Rei started to edge backwards. "Um, I don't really know…" she hedged, now the center of attention for all three. "Gotta go!" And she took off in that ground-swallowing run that her bother had taught her for emergencies. The knife-fighter skidded around the corner to race to the Limelight, wanting to make sure that Monique really wasn't there, that she was safe for the moment from angry imperial soldiers. The soldiers followed as best they could, their armored feet not gaining the same sort of purchase that Rei's sturdy shoes did.

Rei burst through the door to find another soldier standing by the counter, intimidating the poor girl that Monique had gotten to watch her shop for her into white-lipped silence.

"The shop keeper isn't here." The man spoke in solemn tones. "Now we know for sure."

Rei swore, turned, and bolted out the door again, heading for the main entrance to Lumina and leaping over the other soldiers as they came huffing up the road. She was off and gone down the highway towards Polpota before they could even get turned around.

———

Rei was breathing hard by the time she got to Polpota Harbor a little over a week later. She's spent the first day running, putting a healthy distance between her and the imperial soldiers, thankful when it appeared that they didn't have riding animals. She loped over the wood-and-stone bridges to the Flowering's stall to where Flameshe had appeared last time, hoping to talk to the quick-tempered mermaid, but was disappointed when there was no sign of her.

Rei waved to the male Flowering and ran past him, out to the crescent-shaped beach. The promontory would offer her an excellent view of the waters near shore; maybe she could spot Flameshe—or even better, Monique—from there. She found Thoma there in the act of mourning, a bouquet of flowers lying on the gray stone.

"Rest in peace," murmured the soldier to the wind. Both he and Rei jumped when a blade ripped through the fabric of reality in front of them, a suit of armor exactly like the one Sandra had worn putting itself together on the very tip of the stone rib. "You again! Sandra, right?" Thoma demanded, not noticing that Rei hadn't reached for her weapons at all. "Stop what you're doing!"

"Thoma…" whispered the specter, succeeding in making the youth stare. Rei nodded to herself—the person in the armor hadn't felt like Sandra at all. Or, for that matter, alive…

Thoma took a disbelieving step forward, hand outstretched. "Could it be…? Thona, is it you?"

Metal rattled as the slumped figure straightened to intone, "I will not die until the imperial order is fulfilled…"

"Enough, Thona!" pleaded the ghost's brother. "That's my job! To the Underworld with you! You've earned rest; take it."

"I cannot…" groaned Thona. "His highness is immortal…He controls the dead…"

"Some dead have come back, like you," Thoma told him grimly. "Tell me, what has happened here?"

A pale throat worked beneath the lowered visor, Thona clearly forcing the words past his teeth. "Bone…dragon…"

"Thona?" That golden sword struck out again, slicing another rip into a darkness beyond the sunshine and blue sky. Thona disappeared in reverse this time, his armor taking itself apart from the helm down. "Thona!"

Rei whirled on her heel and raced back down the rib towards the marketplace, leaving Thoma alone with his grief. She made a mental note to avoid anyone with the elaborate armor she'd just seen—they'd be nothing but trouble and damned hard to kill since anyone in it would likely have already died. The knife-fighter would have stayed to try and comfort the poor young man she'd just left, but her priority would always lie with the living, and there was still Monique to find before those dratted soldiers caught up.

She sprinted down the boardwalk again to the Seaside Hotel, waving to the Motis as she checked the lounge from before (she found Revanshe dancing and Basket Fish working), then ran down the stairs to the lower beach.

Monique was standing on the lower walkway just beyond the awning, looking rather concerned and puzzled. The pretty siren made a noise of surprise when Rei skidded to a halt in front of her. "Monique! Thank…goddess…" panted the knife-fighter. "What…doing…here?"

"I came to see my friend Elle," explained Monique, correctly guessing what Rei had meant, "but I can't find her. What in Wisp's name are_you_ doing here? And why are you out of breath?"

"Soldiers…hunting sirens…in Lumina. Came…to find…you…gotta…get you…outta here…"

"What?"

But Rei was just a little too slow. A triumphant shout came from the door Rei had just gone through, the three soldiers trotting out of it. Their leader pointed to Monique and shouted, "Hey, there she is! The one that sank our mates' ship!"

"Blast!" swore Rei as she and Monique were surrounded.

"She's a siren, alright!" one of the other soldiers confirmed, pleased. "It must be her!"

Monique silenced him and the rest of them with an imperious swish of her tailfeathers, which had the added effect of pushing them back a little. "Excuse ME!" she said loudly. "I presume you have the wrong person. Yes, I'm a siren, but I haven't been her for a while." She turned to the third soldier. "A ship was sunk? What has happened here lately?"

"Hey!" called another male voice, a fourth soldier coming from the direction of the restaurant. "What are you guys doing over there?"

The trio made a group sound of confusion, their leader glowering at the newcomer. "What do you mean? We found the siren who sank the ship!"

"I did_not_!" insisted Monique, ignored.

"The siren?" scoffed the fourth soldier, waving a hand. "We found one already."

"YOU got one?" demanded the soldier closest to the lamp-maker. "So…what, I'm not getting the reward?"

"That's right," confirmed #4. "Punishing one siren will do. Get back to your posts, already, and quit messing around."

Grumbling, the men surrounding Rei and Monique went off, leaving them alone on the walk. "Well!" Monique huffed. "That sure ruined my day!"

"Waita…second…!" panted Rei as Monique started to leave, those long tail-feathers of hers somehow lofting her a foot or two in the air. "Where're…ya goin'?"

"To find Elle," replied the siren, sounding grumpy for the very first time. "Since she's not here, I'm going to check Madora Beach." Her voice softened, and she turned to look shyly back over her shoulder. "Meet me there? I think I might need your help."

"You got it." Rei gave her a thumbs-up, then waved to tell her to go on ahead. The knife-fighter needed something to drink and a few minutes to catch her breath before she did any more running. Monique fluttered off, and Rei went to the restaurant and got herself that drink. She walked to cool off and to keep her muscles from stiffening, heading back to the rib-stone to see if Thoma was still there. The sprite felt guilty for just running off on him like that.

Instead of Thoma, she found the quartet of soldiers from a little while ago, standing on the sliver of beach and staring across the waves to where a haze-shrouded lump sat on Madora Beach across the harbor. It took all of her willpower not to stalk over to them and deliver a hefty smackdown when she heard what they were saying.

"There's a Boink over there," commented one; he sounded like the soldier that had inadvertently saved Monique. "No one can reach her, so that'll be it!"

Another said thoughtfully, "So that siren will wither and die…Looks like we'll be hated by other sirens…"

"Sirens are only good for singing their songs and sinking ships! We'll always win as long as we chase them to dry land," the third replied scornfully.

The first one laughed and clapped that man on the back. "They'd better know not to go around sinking others' ships!" The group all laughing now, the soldiers went back to their regular duties, leaving Rei behind wondering if she should just toss aside her ethics and hex the soldiers into immobility.

She decided against it, making a mental note instead to come back later and just pound the lot into the sand.

Rested and cooled, Rei stretched her legs a bit before racing to catch up with Monique.

———

A few hours later, with the sun blazing brightly overhead, Rei had it firmly memorized that even wingless Sirens could fly at a pretty good clip. She'd almost caught up to Monique at that same cairn that Rei and Elazul had passed by four months ago, but somehow the Siren girl's steady flap of tail-feathers let her go a lot faster than one would think.

Rei kept catching glimpses of her until the knife-fighter went into the western cave system; she emerged out into the sunlight and nearly ran face-first into the oft-mentioned Boink. Her breath caught in her throat—would it send her back those long five miles back to the entrance cairn?

With a friendly squeak the Boink moved out of her way, leaving the long stretch of pale, sun-drenched beach beyond free and clear. The knife-fighter wasted no time racing down that stretch, before the Boink changed its' mind and chucked her straight back to where she'd started.

Less than five minutes passed before Rei came up to what looked like an enormous birdcage sitting on top of a lump of rock and covered in flowering vines. The whole thing, taken together, nearly rivaled her cottage's tree in height. Monique hovered close to the top, peering through the bars into the depths. Her voice rose over the noise of the waves in dismay. "This is surprising! So it was _you_ whom the soldiers caught!"

"…Yes," a sweet, feminine voice replied from within, "I was the one who sank the ship."

"No, you just sang a song," corrected Monique. "They say our voices bring misfortune, but they don't have the right to say that!"

"But if I don't sing, ships won't sink, either," said the other voice mournfully. "They said I could sing here, since it's away from the ships."

Monique caught the bars and leaned in closer. "You sound like one of those soldiers!" she scolded. "Let the ships sink! You've got to free yourself!"

Rei, not knowing whether it was the voices of Sirens that destroyed ships or the inattention of soldiers who wanted to listen to them, simply walked to the base of the rocky lump supporting the cage and continued to be a silent spectator.

"It's my choice to stay here too, isn't it?" that pretty, sorrowing voice asked Monique. "You are always cooped up in that atelier of yours, too! There are so many soldiers around…Here inside, there's peace."

Rei didn't really know what 'atelier' meant, but figured it probably had something to do with Monique's lamp shop. Curious, she examined the cage from her low spot on the beach. It looked solid enough, but those vines couldn't be healthy for whatever material the bars were made of. And there just had to be a door somewhere…

"Listen to me, Elle," urged the wingless Siren, "I didn't say there was freedom outside. Freedom is inside your heart. You're imprisoning yourself! All we do is sing, and those stupid ships sink. I say, 'Let them!' We're just doing what we were born to do. It's not fair!"

There was a long pause, and then the trapped Elle replied sadly, "I know. But we are constantly being chased down by them. Is gaining freedom really worth all of that trouble?"

"I was born to be myself. That's my freedom," Monique told her friend. Rei made a noise of triumph—she'd found the doorway at last, only to find the missing Flameshe sitting mulishly on the sand right in front of it. The mermaid did not look pleased or cheerful at all.

Rei sighed, walking up to Flameshe and asking without expectation, "I suppose you're not going to let me in, aren't you?"

"No!" was the emphatic reply. "I won't let you in, and I won't let her out! It's too dangerous with all the soldiers! I can't let a friend face danger like that!"

"Like what?" Rei asked. "I'm out there every day, and it's not like there aren't any places left in Fa'Diel that don't have soldiers."

Monique added, "Flameshe, please! Rei can protect Elle for us!"

The mermaid snorted in disbelief. "Yeah, right! This world has too many dangerous people!"

Personally, Rei thought that it wasn't how many dangerous people there were, but how many of them you had on your side that counted, but she didn't think that would get her very far with the protective Flameshe.

Monique pleaded again with her sea-dwelling friend. "Flameshe, please listen to me. That person mastered the Dudbear language and sold my lamps for me!"

"I wouldn't exactly call it 'mastered'," Rei muttered to herself, feeling a blush spread across her face at the unexpected praise. Flameshe looked the knife-fighter up and down and back up again, then looked back up at Monique and curled her fin to her hip.

"So what!"

"You're so stubborn! Just don't get too much sun!" scolded Monique, settling onto the top of the giant cage to wait. Flameshe muttered something in reply that was likely sullen acknowledgement and looked longingly at the water just a few yards away.

Rei got an idea. She put her hands in her pockets, gave an indifferent shrug, and walked away. The moment she got down to the bottom of the rocky outcropping, she ducked around the edge and out of sight from the mermaid. There came a watery 'bu-whup!' sound, which was what Rei had been waiting for. She bolted back up the path and was through the door before an angry Flameshe could transport herself back to her post.

On the first floor inside, she found the source of all those vines. A giant flower monster, as big as the one that had been hiding in the depths of Ulkan Mines, hung from the ceiling with its' roots and vines strung throughout the place. Rei flipped out her knives and waited for the fight to begin.

———

It had taken more time for Monique to argue with Elle than it had taken Rei to finish off the flower monster. She'd learned the trick to fighting the things with the first one, and that was to sever the red-and-purple flower that the main bloom put out before it could use elemental magic to fill the room with spells. That smaller flower would then self-destruct, leaving the main bloom weakened and Rei to sever the more melee-oriented orange flower.

Several repetitions of this, and the giant bloom withered and died, leaving Rei in sole possession of the lower room. Dusting a few streaks of pollen off of her clothing, the knife-fighter sheathed her blades and strolled up the rickety steps that the flower's death had revealed.

Upstairs it was dimmer; the flowering vines that embraced the cage grew thicker up here, leaving a small pond of rain-water and seats formed out of the growth's thick trunk in dappled shadow. Sitting on a swinging perch on the far side of the pond was Elle the Siren, her beautiful, flower-dusted wings folded against her back. A crown of those same flowers rested on her hair of silken, pale honey-gold. The whole scene was straight out of a bed-time storybook, and stopped Rei's breath for a heartbeat with the sad beauty of it all.

There came a soft chuckle from behind Rei, turning out to be Monique hopping up to stand beside her. "Hello, Elle!" greeted the pretty lamp-maker. "How are you doing?"

Rei's desire to flatten those damned soldiers faded when Elle brightened and returned a tremulous smile. "Hello!"

It took only a moment for Monique to take a seat on the floor-hugging trunk by the lonely winged Siren. "Now that the monster is gone, you're free to go out there."

Elle ducked her head. "Thanks. But…I don't want to. I'm such a coward."

"That's okay," soothed Monique, reaching over and patting Elle's hand in reassurance. "You can be a coward. But from now on, you can go outside anytime you want. You can stay here and sing, too. You're free now."

"Thanks."

"Geez," grumped Flameshe, popping into a clear spot next to the pond with her bubble-spell. "Can't you sound a little happier than that?"

"If she wants to sound happy, then I'm sure she can," Rei told the mermaid cheerfully, and took her own seat on the trunk. "In the meantime, lighten up a little. Not everyone's cut out for adventure."

"No one asked you," Flameshe retorted, but there wasn't any heat to it. Instead, the mermaid slid tail-first into the pond and sighed in relief. "I don't understand how you two-leggers can stand being out in the sun all day. My scales dry out if I don't wet down every so often."

Rei grinned. "Then I guess I'm glad I don't have scales. Anyway," she added, turning her attention from mermaid to Sirens, "so this is Elle? It's a pleasure to meet you."

Elle blinked at her in surprise before replying, "Hello. Who are you?"

"Elle, this is Rei Venstry from Haven Tree Cottage, just outside Domina. Rei, this is Elle, my best friend and the one who taught me and Flameshe how to sing," Monique introduced them, looking rather pleased with herself. "Thank you for getting rid of that monster, Rei."

"No problem." Rei waved a hand to show that it was nothing, and gave both Sirens a crooked grin. "But you know, if you really want to thank me, I do have one request."

The two bird-girls looked at each other in surprise, then looked back at Rei. "Which is?" Monique asked.

Rei's grin got a little wider. "Can I hear you sing again? I hardly got to hear anything that day I met you, and I haven't gotten to hear you sing since. One Siren is a wonderful performance: I'll bet two and a mermaid is even prettier."

She felt ridiculously proud of herself when that made Elle really smile for the first time. Then she sat back and enjoyed the performance.

————

Bud looked up from sweeping at the sound of the front door opening and closing. Rei stood on the front step, a cloak draped around her shoulders to ward off the bite of the autumn morning. Winter was around the corner, though no snow had fallen yet, and false-summer had quietly died as the leaves had turned. There was more than enough food stored away to last the cottage's inhabitants for the whole winter; preservation spells lay thick in the pantry and cellar, filled to the brim with produce and meats.

"Good morning, Master Rei," the Elven boy greeted her, wincing as his voice cracked on the last syllable.

Rei smiled at him, giving him a quick visual check over for the hundredth time to make sure that his new clothes fit. Both twins had gone into a growth spurt this month, spurring Rei to go and hunt treasure in order to buy them both new clothes, most of it made of wool-plush or leather for the coming winter. Lisa hadn't grown more than a couple of inches, putting the top of her head even with her teacher's collarbone.

Bud, on the other hand, had shot up like a weed and was even with Rei's chin. He'd also settled at last under the steady hand of his teacher, the workshop no longer in danger from potions gone awry, and the unfinished, underfed looks of both twins had started changing into the elegant lines they would have as adults.

"Good morning, Bud," his master replied lightly, proud at the way her students were maturing. "Have you seen Lisa?"

"I think she went into town for some sewing things," Bud told her thoughtfully. "She's been eyeing some of that new embroidering floss that Jennifer stocked for a week now. Where're you off to?" he added, noticing the lump of her pack beneath her cloak.

Rei gave him a sheepish smile. "To Rosiotti's territory. I promised his helper, Roane, that I'd check up on his sister. I'm rather overdue, but I suppose late is better than never. I should be back sometime later tonight."

Bud frowned a little, but nodded his head in understanding. "Alright. It's your night to feed the monsters, though; want me to do it tonight and you tomorrow, instead?"

"That'll do fine, thanks, Bud," Rei told him warmly. She waved as she went through the front gate instead of jumping it so she wouldn't catch her cloak on anything, then jogged off down the road. Bud watched her go, disappointment that he wouldn't be going writ clear in his large blue eyes. It was buried, however, when there came a deep lowing from the monster corral.

The Elven youth rolled his eyes and leaned his broom against the porch, his growing legs carrying him towards the side of the house as he called back, "All right, all right, I hear you, Fuzzbucket! I'm coming to get your breakfasts, just hold your horses!"

———

Rei stuffed her cloak into her pack as she neared the place where she'd met Sotherbee and his 'employees'. The air in the Jungle was much warmer than that back home, despite the fact that it was only a little more than half a day away from Domina. Less, if you ran the way that the knife fighter and her brother could.

To Rei's surprise, there was a being standing on the path before her, all pale blues and yellows, except for his bushy beard and eyebrows. A Flowerling male, here? Then she mentally shrugged, figuring that they had to like winter less than she did and here was a good place to spend the cold months.

"Instant teleportation!" the Flowerling told her cheerfully as she approached. "All it costs is your love!"

Rei grinned, gave him a peck on the cheek, and requested "Forested Ruins, if you please." She'd discovered the name during a brief chat with Roane on her way back from tussling with Du'Cate. Within a blink, she stood on the broken path leading up to Rosiotti's throne. A few strides brought her into the Wisdom's presence, the knife-fighter feeling rather sheepish when she saw two gray-feathered penguins chatting over to the right of said throne.

"I'm sorry I'm late," Rei apologized to them as she approached, looking back and forth between the siblings, wondering how you told the two apart.

"It's okay," said the penguin on the left in Roane's light voice. The one on the right giggled.

"So I'm, like, Selkie!" said the giggler. "Do you want me to get rid of the evil spell on you?"

Rei felt an eyebrow lift. "Evil spell? The only spells I've felt being cast on me lately are Tote's and yours…" She paused, remembering Sandra and the woman's damnable ease at bespelling her. "All right," she sighed.

"Will you do me a favor?"

_If it gets me back home faster?_ Rei thought to herself. All she said aloud though, was 'yes'.

"Yaay! Okay, here's the de-evil-ifying spell!" A mumble of words, a gesture of a flipper-hand, and Rei felt some sort of energy around her fall apart into sparkling dust.

_I can't tell if this was supposed to be a tracking beacon or a jinx,_Rei grumbled in her head, poking at the fading pile with the toe of her shoe. _What a mess._

Selkie nudged her to get her attention. "The Faeries in this forest have been acting really weird. So, could you try finding out why they're like that? 'Ok, I will.' 'Really!.? Like, thanks!.!' " And the penguin-girl giggled again. Rei gave her a dubious sidelong glance for a moment or two, then turned around and headed for the exit.

As she left, she commented over her shoulder, "Roane, you have a really weird sister."

"I know," groaned the youth with some amusement. Selkie gave them both a raspberry and went over to the edge of the ruins to pout.

Taking the fork that led to the territory of the Faeries, Rei found herself a foot or two behind a circle of the thistledown creatures, all gathered around a nun that lay still on the ground. One Faerie made a disgusted sound and booted ineffectually at the woman's side. "This piece of trash does not have any elemental powers!" it squeaked furiously to its' companions. "We need one with stronger powers to become our queen. Bring the priestess of Gato's temple!"

"The priestess looks like a million-year-old hag," protested a second Faerie. "Is she really the one?"

A third Faerie spoke up. "No, Lord Irwin said the priestess is twenty-six."

Number two frowned. "Has not our lord mistaken her age? That is too young. Our last queen was 28,732 years old." Rei pursed her lips in a silent whistle. That was old enough to have seen the Flammies, almost, before they vanished from Fa'Diel. Certainly old enough to remember that first war.

"The new queen is a human," explained the Faerie that had first spoken. "They only live for about five hundred years."

_Sprites can,_ Rei corrected silently, not wanting to get into an argument with a group of folk who outnumbered her eight-or-so to one. _Most humans only live to a century or less._

"Their lifespan is that short?" gasped a fourth Faerie, one that hadn't spoken before.

"I hear it is even shorter," piped a fifth in a confidential tone.

Number two tilted his/her head in puzzlement. "Why has our lord chosen a human to be our queen?" it wondered aloud, then screeched in fear when a blonde man sprang from nowhere into their midst, a long-sword brandished high.

"What are you doing to her, Faeries!.?" he demanded, swinging his sword into one Faerie after another. In panic, the Faeries attempted to flee, but all were cut down without mercy, leaving the man standing over the nun in defense.

Rei burst out of hiding, mouth opening to tear the stranger a new one, but he had already asked the nun if she was alright and had jerked his head up to glare at the knife-fighter. "You! Take her to Rosiotti! He should be over to the east of here. He will be able to help her," he indicated the nun with the hand not clutching his sword in a white-knuckled grip. "He is one of the Wisdoms."

The nun got up, dusted herself off, and told the man sternly, "We nuns walk on our own two feet. We do not rely on so-called 'Wisdoms'." And she limped haughtily off. Rei recognized her as the nun who'd gotten her ankle sprained by that ill-fated Sproutling, and spared a moment of sympathy for her poor luck.

Most of her, however, was still priming for a well-deserved chewing out for the swordsman, who was looking around him as though expecting a horde of tiny magical creatures to converge here at any moment. "Damned Faeries…" he was muttering. "When did they become Irwin's henchmen?" He pinned another glare on Rei as she took a step forward. "This is the forest of the Faeries. You'd better leave. We must not start any wars between humans and Faeries. Avoid any battles, if you can."

Then he turned to go.

———

Escad had been having an eventful day so far; his visit to Gato in order to see Matilda, his old friend and the girl he'd crushed on before he was a Knight and she the Abbess, had yielded a lead to Irwin. Just the thought of that damned demon half-blood was enough to make him grit his teeth so hard they creaked.

So he'd gone racing off to this pesky Jungle to save the kidnapped nun and find Irwin. He's found the one so far, but not the other. Just some blond girl with weird tastes in hair accessories and an outfit that spoke subtly of silk over a hidden blade. He'd given her some advice and turned to go demon hunting when he heard a sound not unlike a teakettle boiling over.

———

Rei's furious shout didn't send him sprawling, but the rock she sent bouncing off the back of his skull certainly did. It laid him out flat, to be precise, facedown in the sparse undergrowth and leaf-litter, his ears ringing louder than church bells. "You…You….You_hypocritical blind__ bastard_!" she screeched at him, striding over to shove him onto his back with a foot, none too gently. "First of all, you ass, I'm a _sprite_, not a human like you! Faeries don't have the same grudge against my kind! Second, you just slaughtered more than half a dozen of the queen's court, and you tell me _'We must not start any wars'_!.? Are those shorts you're wearing cutting off the bloodflow to your brain, or are you always this idiotic!.? And third, I _know_ where Rosiotti is, moron! I was _just there_, talking to his apprentices!" Or whatever you want to call Roane and Selkie, she left unsaid. The knife-fighter raked her gaze over the still-stunned man that had to be Escad, if she remembered correctly the conversation she'd once had with the cat-girl Daena when they went to visit Gaeus together.

He was wearing even less than she was, most of the cloth on his body being a pair of tight shorts, a short vest, and cloth boots. Or at least, that's the closest description of his footwear that she can come up with. Swirling around his hips was a piece of cloth, nearly white, now currently crushed under legs that had too much muscle for their own good. On his shoulders were round guards, enameled purple and edged in more white; he also wore arm guards similar to Rei's own, but again, purple edged in white like his boots and scraps of armor. House colors, maybe, thought a part of Rei's mind not taken up with righteous fury.

Long blond hair was tied out of his face with a teal strip of cloth that matched his shorts and vest, completing the most useless outfit that Rei had ever seen. Counting the dancer outfit that Revanshe wore at the Seaside Hotel.

She let out her breath in a sound of pure disgust and let Escad scramble to his feet, slightly wobbling. "You call yourself a warrior. You dress in practically nothing, everything from the waist up and shoulders in is bare to any attack, and you don't even _think_ before you jump," Rei growled. "I hope a Rabite or something eats you."

Escad made getting while the getting was good and bolted, heading back the way he'd come like all the Underworld was nipping at his heels. Rei merely dusted off her hands, settled her knife-belt more firmly around her waist, and stalked off in the direction the swordsman had went. She wanted to find some Faeries and talk to them, if she could. She'd certainly get more answers out of someone if she asked nicely, at least, instead of hacking them into pieces.

Oooh, she was going to fuming about that all day, she just knew it.

———

She _was_ still fuming half an hour later when the path she'd been following dumped her into a clearing with a beastie that looked like someone had taken a possum and given it green scales and wings instead of fur. It floated at head height off the ground, looking like it would rather be chewing on something right now. Taking a deep breath, Rei squashed her temper back into its' closet and gave the being a polite bow.

"Excuse me."

It eyed her in surprise, then spat, "What is a human like you doing here? Get out of my sight!"

Rei took a deep breath and counted backwards to ten in a language she'd learned at her mother's knee. "I beg your pardon, but I'm a sprite, not a human. Could you please tell me what's going on? Why are the Faeries so restless? And who is this Irwin?"

Whatever bad mood the creature had been in seemed to ease slightly at the courtesy being shown; some of the red left his eyes and the scales along his spine smoothed. "Just like you, a man came to ask about Lord Irwin a while ago. Lord Irwin has lived in the Land of Faeries for the last ten years. He has the blood of a demon in him, and he possesses absolute power. He will become the king of both worlds. That is all I will tell you. Now leave, or you shall be punished."

"But I still don't understa—" Rei began, only to have the monster move to carry out his threat. The knife-fighter sighed, unsheathed her knives, and prepared to work some of her temper out.

———

An hour later saw her back in the ruins that held Rosiotti and his helpers, finishing her explanation of things as she bound up a few scratches she deemed too minor to use a potion on. Her mind had been busy ticking over what the monster she'd been forced to kill had told her, connecting it to that one-time trip with Daena to Gaeus. A demon had taken Matilda's elemental powers from her, which forced the poor priestess-to-be (at the time) into an accelerated aging process. At least, according to Daena.

Irwin had demon blood in him, and had specifically told the Faeries Escad had killed to fetch Matilda to be their queen. Thus, the demon who had stolen Matilda's powers must have been Irwin. But the Faeries wanted someone with strong powers to be their queen, which shorted out Rei's argument. There was also the issue of, if Irwin had harmed the Priestess of Gato in the past, why would he want to help her now, and would being Queen of the Faeries really be helping?

Rei gave up that line of thought at a bad job and turned her attention back to Selkie as the penguin remarked sadly, "Many Faeries feel hatred towards mankind. What should we do, Rosiotti?"

All three looked towards the Wisdom, Roane sighing at the sight of the heavy muzzle resting on massive paws. "He's been asleep the whole time."

Selkie paused, then shrugged, chirping, "Well, whatever will be, will be!"

"Are you sure?" was Roane's uncertain counter. Neither female had an answer for him.

———

When Rei got home later that afternoon, Lisa met her at the front gate, looking worried. "Rei, Pelican came by not two hours ago with a message from that cat-girl Daena. She wanted to know if you'd seen somebody named Escad. He was in Gato this morning…" The Elf-girl trailed off as Rei's head went up and emeralds flashed.

"That hypocritical racist bastard!" Rei yelled at the top of her lungs, striding into the house and slamming the door shut behind her. Lisa had no trouble hearing the additional curses being heaped upon the unfortunate Escad's head from within as the Elf-girl gently shut the poor, abused front gate.

"I suppose that answers that question," she murmured. Then she went around to the back of the workshops to whistle up Pelican.

———————

Poor Escad. He really does make me so mad when he first shows up. He's a wonderfully complex, angst-ridden character, but he just rubs me the wrong way.

Note: I was mistaken in Pelican's actual name. It's Amalette, not Amelia. Must remember to go back and fix that.


	14. Fallen Emperor

**hUes –of– h a z e l:** _—laughs—_ I just stared at the screen and thought 'he can't possibly be serious'.

**Shadow's Rage:** Not so much 'love/hate' as 'mutual antagonism'. I suppose I was having to much fun with that chapter to think that others might not approve or be as delighted. Sorry. Too much buildup? I'm glad you liked it, though.

**Starlight's Delight: **wow. Lots of reviews all at once. I'll just hit the highlights, shall I? 1) Hope you're feeling better. Being sick sucks. (I went image hunting on Google. I never noticed the coloring of him before. Huh.) Xan will be making reappearances, but not as a regular. Yet, anyway. We'll see. 2) Putty's quest drove me nuts. No rhyme or reason. But dang, that Lilipea walked slow! 3) Wow. Lots of enthusiasm there. n,.,n! Thanks.

**Lady Icicle: **You're welcome. Thanks for reviewing!

**Tiamat42:** Mindblock sucks. I agree on the Elle and Pearl comment, but they do find themselves a couple of spines by the end of the game, which is nice. _—laughs sheepishly—_ Ah, yeah, I probably did go a tad overboard with Rei's temper explosion. But such is Rei. As for you last comment about Escad? That sounds about right. n,.,n

**Echidna:**Thank you!

**VrtraHex:** It is hard sometimes. I hope you and everyone else continues bearing with me during those bare-bones chapters. (Is it a bad thing when you start dreaming Ookami?)

Merry Christmas/Kwanza/Chanukah/(insert holiday of choice here)! Stay safe, hope you get what you wanted (within reason) and for those of us in retail, enjoy the brief, blissful moments of quiet before Returns Day.

———————

Time kept going; soon the first layers of snow lay on the ground and blanketed the bare branches of Haven Tree Cottage. Bud and Lisa were very happy that their teacher had thought to get them new, wool clothing. The years they'd spent in the desert-city Geo had made them unaccustomed to things like snow—"I do _not_ like freezing my ears off!" was how Bud put it. "Who in the Goddess' name invented something as useless as snow??"

"The Goddess, Bud," was Rei's calm reply. She'd been making her students a little worried with how quiet she'd gotten the past few days. Bud couldn't even get her to smile. Her latest adventure hadn't helped much either; she'd gone to find the Diggers' religious leader, the dog Putty, by checking the pirate ship belonging to Captain Tusk. When she'd found the dog hiding in a barrel in a far corner of the lowest deck of the hold, he'd raced off to jump overboard and had washed up in Polpota Harbor. Roger hadn't even said thank you when she'd led him straight to Putty.

Finally, though, a week before Winter Solstice, Rei left her students to do their chores and went down the road towards Domina at an uncharacteristic, sedate walk. Her hair-pipes were hidden beneath her cloak's hood and a cloth-wrapped bundle was carried safely in the crook of her arm. The second she was out of sight, Bud put down his broom (he'd been sweeping snow off the front walk, not needing to worry about the Sproutling that was asleep in the barn) and went around to the orchard to talk to Trent.

Despite the cold, Trent was only drowsing rather than asleep and was able to rouse himself when the Elven youth strode into view. "Why is Rei so quiet?" Bud demanded when he got within a few feet of the old tree. "She hasn't yelled, swore, smiled or laughed in more than four days!"

"Is it the nineteenth of Snow Moon yet?" yawned Trent, rustling his bare branches in a tree's stretch. When Bud nodded in confirmation, Trent sighed. "Then it's the anniversary of the day her parents didn't come home. She's gone, right?" Another nod. "She's off to meet Xan at the cemetery. You won't see her or Xan 'til sunrise tomorrow. They'll come home and act as though nothing is wrong; they'll even forget for a little while during the celebration at Solstice. But Rei won't smile for another few days at least."

Bud scowled; he worked hard to make her smile, damn it.

———

Rei sighed when she reached the graveyard where all of Domina's residents went to their rest. The winter season made it dark and bleak, with thin caps of snow covering the headstones and turning the grass and flowers withered. Out of habit, she avoided the middle of the grounds, where a massive headstone crowned with a stone ram's skull sat in a circle of grass that was dead all year 'round.

Xan wasn't here yet so Rei got to work without him. She pulled a small scrub brush from the cloth bundle she'd been carrying and attacked the moss and lichen that had been trying to grow on her family's tombstone. The cloak was draped across a nearby marble bench by the time the Venstry stone gleamed as much as weathered marble could.

The knife-fighter wiped sweat off her forehead and pulled her cloak back on as she looked around her, concern furrowing itself above her eyebrows and turning emerald eyes dark. Where was Xan? He was normally here within a few hours of dawn, and here it was approaching noon with no sign of her brother. So she kept her head up, scanning constantly for him as her hands kept moving in a pattern of long habit. Sticks of her mother's favorite incense were lit and placed in the small holders, soapstone carvings of her father's particular favorite foods that had been created painstakingly over the past year were set on either side of the incense.

Which left her nothing to do, afterwards, but sit on the aforementioned bench and wait for Xan. It was his turn this year to bring their father's preferred incense and mother's food offerings, as well as his task to create the snow-flowers that were going to be placed on the grave. Rei's talents lay in warding and physical crafting, not the delicate spells that let someone make snow into equally-delicate, beautiful flowers that would last for weeks. For all the massive weaponry Xan preferred, his magics tended to follow the path of their father's, mage and artisan that he'd been.

As she waited, glad of her heavy winter cloak, Rei's eyes were caught by a wisp of something that traveled slowly over the white ground of the graveyard. It was heading with obvious reluctance towards that unnerving giant stone, a blue flicker against the grays and whites.

_A spirit?_ Rei wondered to herself, rising and following the wisp several feet back. _But it's broad daylight, it shouldn't be out like this…_ The spirit touched the stone and vanished.

Her foot came down on the edge of the always-dead grass, and a rumbling voice cried from empty air, _"Warrior! I shall test your strength!"_

There was a bright flash that spiked in Rei's head, then nothing.

———

The next thing Rei knew was that the air around her was warmer than it had any right to be. After that registered, the pounding of her head began making itself known, only to fade as she sat up and groaned, "Did anybody get the name of that Du'Inke? Damn thing stepped on me."

"So you've awakened, then," came that rumbling voice again, not nearly so loud as the first time she'd heard it. Rei cracked her eyes open and looked; a yard or two away, there stood a wolf-like man in polished red armor, his muzzle's upper lip folded up into a half-smile. Behind him was glittering stone, all around was stone, never touched by the hand of mortals. Nearby on Rei's right there was a strange creature floating above a fire set into a natural chimney; it saw her looking at it and gave her a wink. "I am Larc, dragoon to Drakonis."

And it was all familiar to her in that strange way that the Tower of Leires had been.

"That doesn't tell me as much as you think it might," Rei grumbled, getting to her feet and dusting herself off. Her cloak was nowhere in sight, so she assumed it had been left back in the graveyard when the wolfish Larc had jumped her. "What's going on?"

"I brought you down into the Underworld because I thought you a powerful warrior," Larc explained in that rough voice of his. "If you want to know more, you should come down below with me."

"I don't suppose I have much of a choice unless I want to try to smack answers out of you."

That won her a slightly bigger smile. "Not really. And I'm not so easily beaten."

"So be it." Rei checked her blades: those were still there, as well as a panpipe flute that she'd made recently, and all were undamaged. "I might as well go with you, then."

Larc gave her an unexpected courtly bow that made his armor creak. "We shall descend into the depths. Go at your own pace, and I shall follow."

"I don't even get directions," Rei grumbled in complaint, but she went forward, heading for the door-shaped hole in the wall that Larc had been standing in front of. "All part of the test, I assume."

"Something like that," agreed her new companion.

"Just so you know, my brother's not going to be happy with you at all." Rei told Larc as their feet carried them down into the heart of the Underworld. "You have very bad timing."

"And fewer opportunities to find worthy candidates," was Larc's unperturbed reply. The knife-fighter scowled but didn't continue trying to bait the dragoon.

The hole—Rei could hardly call something that roughly made a doorway—led into a tiny bubble of a room, which had a crack on the far side large enough for even Larc's bulky frame that let misty purple light spread onto the floor. The knife-fighter strode on through, pausing at the sight of two more of the same creature she'd seen hovering a moment ago over flames drifting in an aimless fashion near the top of wide, shallow steps that led down.

"What are you?" she asked the nearest of the twain, its body candy-cane-striped in pink and white.

It replied in a sing-song voice, "We're Shadoles!"

That left Rei gazing in outright fascination: so these were the creations of the previous lord of the Underworld? She didn't remember off the top of her head which history book in her library had told her about them or the specific details of who had made them, but back before the war that had left the Mana Tree burnt to ashes, a Faerie had been lord here and had made himself servants, calling them Shadoles.

Take a rounded hourglass-shape, add stubby arms and legs, and stick on a head-growth to match the foot-long tapering tail. Paint them like candy-canes, some color always alternating with white stripes. Round eyes and mouths with no lips were practically the only way to tell them heads-from-tails. These were the Shadoles, guides to the dead and now the wise-cracking henchmen of the current lord of the Underworld, the ex-general and Wisdom, Olbohn.

Bud was going to flip out when she brought him down here to meet his fifth Wisdom.

The second Shadole let out a cackle and pointed at the red-clad dragoon behind Rei. "Hey, newly-dead! Watch out for that guy!" And it cackled again.

"Chyeah, no kidding," Rei told it as she passed, following the steps ever downwards until they bottomed out into a larger chamber. There was one crack/doorway leading into more purplish light, but a second one on Rei's left shone with golden mist. Rei found her feet carrying her straight for that second opening without so much as a by-your-leave. Behind her Larc made a pleased sound and trailed into the new room on her heels.

Inside was a room the size of her cottage, with thin ribbons of brown stone leading around the stalagmite-thick walls to an opening that slowly bubbled different colors of flame towards a hole in the ceiling. Two Shadoles patrolled here as well, with one at the bottom of the steps and one waiting by the opening leading into Goddess-knew-where.

Larc took the lead now, guiding Rei up the steps to the second Shadole. "I need you to pour some flames over my new friend here…" he began coaxingly, only to have the Shadole interrupt.

"No way, Jose!" it told him flatly. "Ain't nobody gonna receive no Baptism of Flame without Olbohn's permission!" And it proceeded to boot him and Rei out of the chamber.

Larc dusted off his armor and shot a look at Rei, daring her to so much as snicker. But the knife-fighter was too busy putting her hair-ornaments back to rights so she completely missed the look. Clearing his throat, the wolf-kin dragoon said after a moment or two, "I suppose we'd better go see Olbohn."

"Mm-hm," was Rei's distracted reply. She was trying to think how she'd break it to Bud that adventure had found her again, this time definitely 'nil she', and how she should convince him to brave the graveyard in order to see the Wisdom. Not to mention she was still trying to get her pipes to stop standing askew.

"Out of curiosity," Larc spoke as they walked towards the gap that was bleeding violet-lit mist, "what are those things and how do you get them to stay?"

"They're just ornaments for my hair that Xan got me for my birthday back when we were kids," Rei answered. "They stay with a little bit of magic and a little bit of cloth wrapped around my hair and stuffed into the ends. They're quite secure, normally. A bit of a hurry like that shouldn't have done more than made them chime a little."

"I wouldn't think they'd stay at all, even with magic," Larc said, sounding a little uncomfortable for no reason that Rei could figure.

"Well, it helps that my hair is so thick." Meanwhile, the two had been walking down a second flight of stairs, lined with the same sort of vertical, wall-clinging carvings of claws found in the Baptism Chamber and spaced, like the first staircase had been, with leering stone faces and brackets holding torches. It ended in a low-ceilinged corridor of rough stone, and Rei's sense of I've-been-here-before had her walking straight down the hall and into the first round doorway she came to.

Larc gave her a look of surprise that she couldn't see as she strode through the bubble of a room with another door-crack on the other side that plunked them into a brighter, more finished corridor. "How did you know which door to turn in?"

One bare shoulder rose into a shrug. "The same way I know every inch of Leires: I have no idea. What's down this way?"

"What we're looking for, sort of. You can go on if you wish, but all the doors around here are closed to you. You must report to Olbohn first, or else you won't be able to get around."

"And he's down this-a-way?"

Larc nodded. "His chambers are near here. He's a Wisdom—"

"Knew that."

"—and the manager of departed souls. He keeps the dead from getting out of hand."

Rei gave him a crooked smile and walked down the hallway. "He's doing a good job, then. This place is dead-quiet."

"Like I haven't heard that one before," groaned the dragoon, following after. Rei glanced at him over her shoulder and winked.

"I had to at least get one bad pun out. Ask Elazul, if you ever meet him. I pun at him all the time."

"He has my utmost sympathies."

Rei went into the one open door with Larc right on her heels, both of them hesitating in the doorway at the sight of the gray-skinned, bulb-headed male sprite that hovered above the floor by spinning several pairs of arms like a propeller around his neck. One pair was left free and was crossed over his thin chest, as three large blue eyes gazed steadily at them both.

"I am Olbohn, keeper of the Underworld," the sprite intoned, narrowing all three eyes at the sight of the red-armored male standing behind Rei. "Larc, Dragoon of Drakonis." Larc remained silent, staring challengingly back. "Why do you bother me, bringing this person down here?"

"As a dragoon," rumbled Larc, "I must follow the will of my master."

"But this time you've brought quite a lively one," Olbohn said, eyeing Rei up and down. The knife-fighter bristled, insulted at the casual way she was being examined. "So will Drakonis' evil plans succeed now? I would love to help out if you had a nice spot for me," he finished, sounding unexpectedly eager.

"If you really mean it, then give permission to perform the Baptism of Flame. But if those words were meant to insult my master, then mind you…"

"Permission granted," Olbohn said airily, waving one of his free hands. "Perform the Baptism of Flame. The Shadole will guide you." With another wave, a yellow-and-white Shadole popped into the room from thin air.

"Thank you, Olbohn," Rei said, walking over to the Shadole. "Hi."

"Hi! The Underworld's pretty big, but I can help you get around. The surface, Chamber of the Baptism…"

"To the Chamber, please."

"Okay! See ya!" With a cheerful cackle the Shadole cast a spell that sent Rei's stomach hurtling towards the floor. When she opened her eyes again, the knife-fighter and her companion were standing just outside the entrance to the Chamber. Larc nudged Rei inside and they climbed the stairs to the waiting Shadole.

"So what's on your mind?" it asked as they approached.

"We have permission," Larc told the Shadole. "Perform the Baptism of Flames."

"Here ya go, daddy-o!" sing-songed the beastie. Rei let out a yelp of surprise when brightly colored flames exploded around her, the knife-fighter nearly jumping out of her skin from shock. After a brief moment of floor-shaking and blinding lights, everything subsided. The Shadole squeaked over the ringing in Rei's ears, "Now you can go to the bottom levels."

"Thanks, but right now I'd rather have my hearing back," muttered Rei, rubbing at her ears.

Larc grabbed her arm, triumph in his eyes. "Let's go! Our master awaits!"

Rei shook him loose, raising her head as high as it could go in order to stare coldly into Larc's eyes. "I have no master, Larc, save the Mana Goddess. Just you remember that."

The dragoon blinked, taken aback at the sudden change in her attitude. The knife-fighter had been taking things surprisingly well, neither immobile with shock or noticeably upset, until now. He cleared his throat and apologized, watching as Rei immediately calmed down and resumed acting like someone who'd resigned herself to a whirlwind of events.

"Oh!" Rei smacked her fist into her palm, remembering. "I need to go back and ask Olbohn something!"

Not wanting to have another mood-swing pulled on him, Larc readily agreed and the two went back the way they'd come, through the hidden passage to Olbohn's corridor. The doors were open here, as promised, and as Rei went past the first one a piece of her soul shivered, chiming like a struck crystal. The knife-fighter stopped dead in her tracks, then whirled and darted into the room, eyes wide.

Inside, a familiar figure in the flame-licked robes of a monk of Gato Grottoes paced, impatience written in every line of his body. Rei stood and stared, the man's name rising to her lips in a gasp. "Rubens!"

The Jumi Knight's spirit turned, surprise blooming in dark red eyes. "What are you doing here? Are you dead, too?" Mutely, Rei could only shake her head, feeling remorse and sorrow creeping up her throat. Rubens began pacing again, gesturing at the walls around him. "I may be stuck down here, but I'll never give up!" he told her, nearly shouting. "The Jumi will survive! We do not exist simply to be stolen." He came back over, catching Rei's hands and catching her gaze with his own, willing her to believe him. "We can exist without Florina, and without Pearl. I will not give up until the last Jumi is broken! I'm sure Diana would say the same," he finished sheepishly, cheeks turning faintly pink.

Grief and sorrow were banished in the face of Rubens' conviction, Rei moving her hands to clasp them with the Ruby Knight's. "Then I won't either!" she replied, grinning at him. "I swear it!" Something occurred to her, and the smile faded a little. "But why would you need Pearl?"

"Pearl is a Guardian, so she is the one of the last who can attain the rank of Clarius and regain the ability to shed tears," Rubens explained. "The Clarius is the only one who can return life to Jumi cores."

"And Florina?"

"Our last Clarius. She disappeared just before the war with Deathbringer over the Mana Stones. No one knows what happened to her, and she's not down here; I've checked."

Rei gripped his hands tighter with a determined expression. "Then I'll find her for you, if I can."

The gratitude she saw in his eyes made her forget, for a brief moment, that he was dead and trapped here in Underworld. "Thank you…" he began, and then his mouth crooked into a lopsided smile. "You know, I never did learn your name."

That made her laugh, a pealing sound that echoed off the walls and ceiling, and for one moment the laughter and her smile banished the gloomy aura of the place. "It's Rei, Rei Venstry!"

Rubens bent down a little and left a kiss on her cheek. "Then fare you very well, Rei Venstry, and I hope that our determination and prayers will be answered."

"May the Goddess make it so," agreed Rei fervently, hugging the Knight before she left. Larc was her armored shadow, as always, as she walked slowly down the corridor.

After several long moments, the dragoon spoke. "You seem very fond of him." It was hard to tell around the growl that was his voice, but Rei couldn't detect anything but simple observation. "How long have you known him?"

"For less than a day before a jewel-hunter named Sandra stole his core and killed him," Rei answered, feeling her optimistic nature at last shake itself loose from the unexpectedness of being down in the Underworld. "He's a good man, dead or not, and I _swear_ that Sandra won't get away with it!"

"You are a very loyal person, Rei Venstry," Larc commented, giving her an odd look. "You remind me of someone I knew a long time ago."

"Is that a good thing or a bad thing?"

"It's not a bad thing," the dragoon said slowly, "but we'll still have to see if it's a good thing."

———

The monsters that could be found in Underworld weren't much different from those in Leires, though the strange little wooden puppets were new. And rather annoying. Still, it _was_ nice for Rei to be fighting alongside someone who wasn't more worried about her skills than his own. For once, she was able to concentrate fully on the fights instead of keeping an eye on apprentice or pet.

It didn't take long for them to reach the bottom level of the Underworld, and Larc paused her just outside of a final hidden entrance. "Now we shall see if you are worthy enough to serve my master. Are you ready?"

"I don't 'serve' anyone, Larc, but I'm ready for this test-thing you want to put me through," Rei grumped, pushing her bangs out of her face.

"Then let's go!" And they raced into a room whose walls were covered in hand-like carvings and four carved faces bigger than either fighter. All of them had spiraling horns emerging above their eyes, and all of the stone faces smiled cruelly down at them.

"That's not creepy at all," muttered Rei, before her attention turned to a monster that appeared in the middle of the room. It looked like a drama mask that had been painted orange-gold and white, surrounded by pale golden flames. Rei couldn't help but chuckle at the thought of what Elazul's reaction would be if he was here now, then she threw herself into the battle.

———

Rei was grinning at Larc at the end of the brief battle, watching him brush his gauntleted, furry hands over charred spots in armor and his dark gray coat. "Now, this is why every time one of those faces started giggling, I ran for cover," she told him with no little amusement, winning herself a grumpy baring of teeth. The mask-thing hadn't been much of a challenge, but the carved stone faces had been more than a bit of trouble. The monster had kept disappearing, which triggered the faces to send out glowing beams of caustic green light, or space-warping rings of gold, or both.

Which was why, whenever the mask-thing went poof and the faces had started giggling silently, Rei had ducked into the thin space by the door where neither beam nor ring could reach. Unfortunately, Larc didn't seem to have picked up on such a wise action immediately and had gotten hit with them more than once. So Rei had escaped with little more than a scratch or two, while Larc had holes in his armor and fur.

"Incredible.." Larc sighed when he'd finished and given Rei a quick glancing-over. "My master will be most pleased."

"Oh, good. Now we get to the answers part of the tour," Rei chuckled, sheathing her blades and following him through the father door onto a broad expanse of empty stone that dropped away into a lake of molten rock. In the distance, half-hidden by the rippling waves of burning air, sat a castle that even from this far away gave Rei the creeps.

"Prepare yourself, for my master comes," Larc intoned, dropping to one knee and bowing his head. "Lord Drakonis…"

With the faintest shiver of magic, a man with a thin, pale face appeared on the stone in front of them. He wore long, heavily embroidered robes despite the heat, and a turban encrusted with tiny jewels. All of his clothing was the same dark red silk, a color that nearly matched his neatly-trimmed mustache and goatee. And right now, he was smiling at his dragoon in a way that set all of Rei's instincts screaming.

"So you finally found one, Larc…One who can defeat Hitodama."

"Yes, my lord," replied Larc, keeping his head bowed.

Drakonis' head turned to Rei, who was standing there with her weight balanced and her hands resting on the pommel-stones of her knives. With a rustling of fabric, the man dipped his head in a gesture of acknowledgement. "Enough pleasantries, great warrior. My name is Drakonis. I summoned you for a reason. I want you to return the magical powers stolen from me by three dragons."

Rei kept herself from mentioning that Larc, not Drakonis, was the one who'd dragged her into this mess, and instead asked, "Why?"

Dark eyes glittered in remembered anger. "Long ago on the surface, I was once the Emperor of Dragons. But three jealous dragons stole my powers. I was made to wander the Underworld in this weakened form. I awaited the coming of one who could defeat the three dragons in my stead."

Rei lifted an eyebrow and tilted her head around Drakonis to look over at the kneeling Larc. "Translation, Larc?"

The dragoon coughed his surprise, peeking up at his master in a request to stand. When the man nodded, Larc rose to his feet and spoke. "What my master wants is for you to defeat the three dragons."

"Oh?" drawled the knife-fighter. "And if I still say no?"

Larc looked distinctly uncomfortable. "Either way, you must cooperate. Because if we leave you as a half-spirit…you will eventually turn to nothingness."

The two males watched as all the blood drained from Rei's face, leaving her pale and shaking in what could be fury or despair. She looked to Drakonis for confirmation, and he nodded. "I could not stand letting so strong a warrior to fade away," he said quietly. "If you defeat the three dragons, I will return you to your previous form."

"Then it seems I have no choice at all, Lord Drakonis. I accept your offer." Rei's voice was flat, and boded trouble for Larc the moment the two got out of earshot.

But Drakonis seemed not to care. He laughed and told Rei, "I am in your debt, strong warrior."

_Indebted, hell, this is blackmail you bastard, and I won't forget it, _the knife-fighter thought to herself, baring her teeth at the dragon-man in a mockery of a smile.

———

A few heartbeats later, Rei found herself once again on the snowy surface, dizzy and slightly disoriented from the rush of Drakonis' magic that had carried them fast as a whip-crack out of the Underworld. The next thing she knew was someone throwing their arms around her and shouting her name in relief.

"Hi, Xan," grunted the knife-fighter, prying her brother off of her to a more comfortable arm's length. He was wearing the shirt made from shed Rabite fur that Rei had made him a few years ago; the warm, naturally caramel hue set off both his skin and hair nicely, she'd always thought.

"Goddess bless, woman, where have you been?" he demanded of her, giving her the once-over and frowning harder than before. "Your energy flows are out of whack like nothing I've ever seen! What's going on?"

"It's a long story," Rei told him, breathing the fresh winter air gratefully. The air had been, to pardon the phrasing, completely dead down below, with never a breath of wind at all. "And I'll explain later. But first…" She turned to Larc, who had been standing by the massive memorial stone with wariness tightening every line of his body. "Larc, I'll meet you back here a week from today, about midmorning, all right?"

Larc looked to her, then took a moment to look Xan over, noting especially the massive sword resting easily across his back. "Very well."

"Thank you." And she began pushing her brother towards their parents' grave. There was a shiver of magic, and then Larc was gone. Presumably back down to the Underworld.

"Right. So, mind explaining?" Xan asked as they stopped at the grave now blanketed in a layer of glittering white flowers around the bottom of the headstone. Rei ignored him for a few breaths, using the time to bow respectfully to the white marble stone and to note that her brother had done much as she had: there were new incense sticks burning as well as new little carvings of their mother's favorite foods.

_Mother, Father, our family's weird luck is holding true, as always, _Rei sighed in her head. _Here's hoping I don't end up getting myself killed._

Then she accepted her cloak from Xan and began to explain as they sat down on the marble bench nearby. They both still had things to do before they went back to Haven Tree Cottage.

———


	15. Guardian of Winds

I am soo sorry! I hadn't realized that it's been nearly three weeks since I updated! And I also apologize, most of the chapters in the Dragon Arc are actually about the same length as always. Gods, I can be such a spaz sometimes.

**Lady Icicle:** Yep, Drakonis really does that. Drives me nuts every time.

**Starlight's Delight:** Thank you, I'm glad that the land-blending's working out so well. The 'I know where I'm going' thing will be delved into eventually. I'm just not sure when. Possibly around the last chapter of the fic. But I swear to you, it will be explained. (And I noticed that problem with the tunnel vision in a lot of different multichapter fics too. It's no fun to write that way, you know?)

**VrtraHex:** Darling, we write and read fanfiction. You've got to be a little nerdy to do that. A little more doesn't matter. (And I _like_ Issun and Waka. They just haven't managed to land roles yet. n,.,n )

I am now going to reply to Tiamat42. It's going to be a bit long; feel free to skip ahead to the chapter, okay?

**Tiamat42:**There are a huge number of loose ends left hanging by the time the game ends. Pearl's situation is only one of them. They include: Skippy and Hamson's never-to-be-done mini-chapters, Thona and his brother, Sandra herself, and the several tidbits you get to see in the ending credits and nowhere else. Gah! All they do is provide hooks for us writers to nibble on. They're baited with plot-bunnies, I tell you.

Why would I hit you? You amuse me. We do always seem to end up working the same segments, don't we? I'll see if I can't change that once I hit some of the side-quests and unrelated adventures.

Heroes need reasons to do what they do and for what they are. That's my belief and my practice. Plus, I have that much more fun messing with backstory and the characters' heads. Bwahaha!

As far as the dialogue goes, I'm still using ninety-percent game content. If the story runs smoother, I assuredly have no idea why. For the conclusion of this reply, I do so hereby bequeath upon you a raspberry for the slash comment. If you don't like it, you can go write your own fanfii…Oh, wait…Never mind. _—grin—_ Next time I'll just use something like 'crack-doorway-thingie'.

On to fic!

———

On the promised morning Rei went back to the memorial in the graveyard, this time wearing her winter leggings beneath her normal outfit and with her pack bouncing on her shoulder. Larc stood waiting for her there in the middle of the patch of dead grass, his armor repaired and gleaming in the winter sunlight.

"You lucked out, you know," she told him when she'd gotten within earshot. "Xan was too distracted at the time to go after you like he wanted to after I told him what had happened. He agreed to stay at home, but he made me promise that I'd tell you for him, 'Be nice to my little sister or I'll be having a new wolf-skin rug for my hearth'."

"I'm already dead, actually," Larc told her in a half-amused growl. "That isn't much of a threat."

"He made me promise." She shrugged.

"I see. Anyway, my master told me to give you this as proof of our contract." The dragoon rummaged around in a pack of his own and pulled out an actual-Goddess-bless skull that had been coated in metal and turned into a lamp.

"Lovely." Knowing perfectly well that her expression was one of distaste, Rei reached out and took the lamp. Only to have it shatter into a cloud of snowflakes the second it touched her hand, with the same feeling of magical release that she'd felt when Niccolo had had her carry an old wagon wheel all those months ago. "That's happening a lot faster these days," she remarked to no one in particular as Larc got over his startlement. "I just can't seem to keep Artifacts contained for longer than a few hours."

"You've had more of them?"

"More than half a dozen, and all of them have done what that lamp just did. Ka-poof."

"Interesting."

"So…now what?"

"Now we are off to hunt the Dragons of Knowledge." Larc added in a deeper growl, "They think they protect order in the world, but we do not need their domination. If you do not like what I am doing, you are free to do as you will. But do not forget: this is an important opportunity to test your powers."

"Don't forget yourself, Larc," Rei shot back, "that I'm doing this because I don't want to leave my apprentices alone in the world, or my brother or friends grieving. I'm stuck doing this with you and it has nothing to do with 'testing my powers'."

The wolf-kin paused, looking at her in dismay. "You have apprentices?"

Rei nodded, prodding him in the shoulder to get him to start walking. "Yes, twin Elves, a boy and girl. They're devoted as hell, and I nearly had to have Bud's Grey Ox sit on him to keep him from following me and attempting to brain you with his frying pan."

She would have sworn his mouth twitched into a real smile. "Frying pan?"

"It's a long story, and I'll explain on the way to…?"

"The mountains, Norn Peaks."

"On the way to the Norn mountains. Come on, let's go, I want to get this over with as fast as possible. No offense."

"None taken."

———

It took them the better part of a week to get to the Norn mountains, and in the meantime Rei had exerted all of her considerable personality on getting Larc to open up. It had taken pretty much all of her charm to get him to open up, too, and she'd learned that the one she'd reminded him off was his sister Sierra. She didn't get much more on that subject, though, other than the fact that Sierra was also a dragoon in service to another dragon somewhere out there.

But she'd learned that he had a wicked sense of humor and he had excellent aim with those axes of his. She'd challenged him to several contests and had only won about half the time. Even Xan lost to her more than that.

The two were walking now through a forest remarkably unscathed by the winter cold. Flowers were everywhere and the trees around them were still filled with green leaves. There were even birds still here, singing madly through the leaves.

All at once Larc put a hand out to stop Rei, lifting his nose into the oncoming breeze. "Wait…" he murmured…and then he pushed Rei back and brought up an axe as something violet and green came plummeting out of the branches above them.

Silvery blades came clashing down on the blade of the axe, and Rei stared at a feminine wolf-kin with soft gray fur and a half-tamed head of violet hair. There was a lot of white fluffiness off the back of the female's green armor and Rei couldn't tell what it was or what it was for. What was most unique, though, was the tiny spiral horn that peeked out from between the female's bangs on a forehead guard.

Pushing off of the axe, the female landed in a crouch, her eyes gazing at Larc in accusation. "Larc…" she murmured, looking from him to his companion. "So you finally found the other warrior…"

"Sierra…" Larc's voice was low and filled with yearning.

The wolf-woman jerked herself upright and pointed a finger at her brother. "Do you not see? You are being tricked!" When Larc remained silent, she swore and disappeared back into the trees with a shout of, "Blasted Drakonis!"

Rei allowed several long heartbeats of silence, then commented mildly, "That was interesting. It's been a while since I've seen someone else use knives."

Larc stayed silent as they continued to walk up the trail.

At the top was a tiny village that couldn't have contained more than a dozen homes, all of them appearing to be only one or two rooms, and all of them standing on top of thick poles. Thin ladders or steps connected each door to the ground; wind vanes topped practically every home.

The open area that every front door faced held three or four green-plumed bird-sprites bustling around, with three turquoise ones standing sentinel at the mouth of a narrow trail that led up. Curious, Rei wandered over to one of the green birds and tapped him politely on the shoulder. Wide eyed, the bird-man angled his head to look at her over his shoulder, equal curiosity in his eyes. "Who are you..?" he trilled softly.

"I'm Rei. It's a pleasure to meet you."

"And you," the youth replied. Then he spotted Larc approaching the sentinels, and with a squawk he and the others scattered. Rei hastily trotted over to her companion, disappointed that she hadn't gotten to talk more. The place looked fascinating and she had dozens of questions.

Unfortunately, it didn't look like she'd be getting answers so long as she was with present company.

"Windcallers…"Larc rumbled in displeasure. "Dragoons of Akravator, eh?"

"So you are the dragoon of Drakonis," the bird-man closest to him squawked, sounding equally displeased.

"I have come for your master. Take me to him."

The lead bird-man pointed with an arm-wing in the direction that the trail went. "Our master sits atop the mountain. See if you can make it!" Larc didn't need anything else as his invitation; he strode between the sprites and headed straight up the path, drawing hisses of anger from all three dragoons. "How dare you! Fool! Do you think we know not of your plan!.?"

Rei took a prudent step backwards when the bird-man gestured and Larc disappeared from view thanks to a teleportation spell. The red armored wolf popped back into existence right in front of her, teeth bared in a scowl.

"I will not be bested by such attacks," he growled.

"Impressive…Dragoon of Drakonis!" And with that, the Elders took off into the air, flying into the mist that hid the higher peaks from view.

"Here I come!" roared Larc, striding up the path that was now open to him and Rei. The knife-fighter shook her head and trailed after her companion, a dread feeling in her bones telling her that this was not going to end well. Not at all.

Above, the mountainside was foggy and dim, the light that poured into the valley bellow muted here. Rei shivered and pulled her cloak tighter as they chose a left fork to follow. The monsters around here weren't too much trouble, though Rei was reminded why she didn't like Shrieknips much. They made her ears ring.

Easing around massive dagger-like boulders, the two fighters came upon an open flat space that had, once upon a time, been paved. But like Rosiotti's lair in the Jungle, the plants here had taken it upon themselves to erase the hand of mortals. They just hadn't gotten quite so far.

Waiting for them, though, was one of the turquoise-feathered dragoons, standing smack in the middle of the open space. Rei got a good look around after she noticed him and squeaked—_damn_, but they were high up! "Thou shalt not pass!" cried the dragoon, spreading his wings in challenge.

Larc brandished his axes. "Death awaits you!"

"Men," muttered Rei. "Always with the drama." And then the fight began.

Akravator's people, Rei quickly learned, were very fond of elemental-based attacks. Within the first twenty seconds she'd dodged at least three, mostly from flutes but at least one was a harp. This one was also particularly fond of using wooden throwing knives shaped like twisting thorns. Rei quickly moved into attacking at close range, Larc wordlessly volunteering to draw the bird-man's fire.

Shortly, Akravator's dragoon lay broken on the stones. Broken in body, though certainly not in spirit. He managed to curse them with his dying breath as he vanished in a spray of feathers, leaving the wispy shade of himself to fly through the air towards the peak. There came a metallic _ching_ that left Larc with his ears pricked forward in their spaces on his helm.

"Some kind of barrier…?" he wondered aloud. Rei didn't answer him, too busy dipping her head in a respectful gesture as her hands fluttered through the air. "What are you doing?"

"Paying my respects to the dead," Rei answered. "This is how my family gives our thanks for teaching us and apologizes for the necessity of taking the life of an opponent."

That gave Larc pause; he watched as the knife-fighter's scarred hands traced through the air, the faintest glitter of Mana following their path. At the end, traced in her own magic, the Mana Tree hung for a brief moment in the air before it morphed into a long-necked bird with spread wings that dissolved a heartbeat later. "May the Goddess watch over your spirit as it flies," Rei murmured, then gave Larc a nod to indicate she was ready to leave.

He looked at her as though he'd never seen her before, as if they hadn't just spent a week hiking into the southern mountains and learning about each other as they'd went. Rei endured it for a few heartbeats, then allowed a frown to replace the serenity that the prayer had given her. "What? What are you staring for?"

"You never said that you were a Mana Priestess." If she didn't know better, she'd swear the dragoon sounded accusing.

But all Rei did was blink. "That's because I'm not. None of the women in my family have been. If we follow the Goddess, we do so freely."

Larc frowned thoughtfully, but let the subject drop. The two picked their way down the trail in comfortable silence in search of another route.

And Rei carefully didn't tell Larc that she'd lied.

———

Twice more, dragoons of Akravator were found lying in wait for them in the most out-of-the-way corners of the mountain trail. When both were defeated, their shades went soaring off just like the first, with the same result: that metallic _ching_ of something unlocking. Both times, Rei sent their spirits off with the prayer, much to Larc's growing suspicion.

Rei never was particularly good at keeping up a lie. Not even this one.

With the third dragoon-bird gone, the two fighters backtracked yet again—giving Larc a chance to learn that Rei enjoyed fighting a certain kind of monster. He didn't know what they were called, but they were big, green, and bipedal, and were avid practitioners of martial arts. She thought they were excellent opponents and kept muttering cheerfully under her breath about 'training exercises' every time she beat one.

At the upper forking of the trail where it split three ways, there sat a stone dragoon-bird blocking the way. Larc had left it alone when Rei had told him it was bespelled. But as he and the knife-fighter approached it, the shades of the fallen Elders whirled around it and vanished along with the statue.

"I knew it was some sort of barrier!" exulted Larc, and he hauled Rei up the path without hesitation. Until Rei threatened to send him tumbling head over heels back down the mountainside if he didn't let her go, anyway. From then on he proceeded at a more sedate pace without literally dragging her behind him.

More monsters (almost all of them winged) and several minutes worth of steep incline brought them to the top of the trail, where they were abruptly blocked by all four apprentice dragoons that weren't even out of their green plumage yet.

"What do you want, whelps?" Larc demanded, baring his teeth at them.

"We may be weak," trilled the leader in the voice of the one who had spoken to Rei back in the village, "but we serve Akravator!"

"We stop you with our lives!" shrilled another.

Larc snorted in disdain. "Such worthless lives…"

The younglings snapped their beaks in anger. "What was that?.!" came from several throats.

Larc swung out his axes and dropped into a ready stance. "Fine! Then I shall take your lives from you."

"Larc!_DON'T_!" yelled Rei just a second too late. The echo of her shout died away, muffled under the sounds of feathered bodies hitting the stone. Her companion shook the blood off his weapons and stared coldly at the empty air in front of him.

"You should listen to the strong."

Rei's fist came flying out of nowhere to put him flat on his back with his ears ringing in time to the throb in his jaw. Rei crouched over him shaking in fury, tears running down her face and knives held centimeters away from his vulnerable throat. "Never. Never again kill innocents before my eyes, Dragoon of Drakonis," she hissed at him, low and burning, "or _I_ will send you back to your lord in more pieces than I can count."

She left him with that thought as she turned and went among the fallen, seeking to keep death from as many as she could with the help of her ever-present vials of insta-heal potion. The tears fell harder when she was able to save only one: the apprentice who'd spoken to her below. He stared up at her in wordless confusion as his injuries faded from deadly to moderate, the potions only working so far on a being they weren't designed for. Rei gently bound up the rest.

Larc chose to remain where he was, only sitting himself upright to watch his companion minister to the living and the dead. He observed in silence as a different prayer was performed over the bodies of the apprentices, and spoke not a word when they vanished in tendrils of Mana.

Rei stalked past him with her head high, using a rag to clean the blood smeared on her arms with bits of feather stuck in the mess. She didn't even look at him as Larc heaved himself back to his feet and followed after, a hand rubbing gingerly at his aching jaw.

_Note to self,_ he thought to himself without mirth,_do not piss off the wildcat. Will get seriously clawed._

Rei was hotly silent the rest of the way up the mountain, Larc prudently keeping his muzzle shut as well. He had no inclination to see how weak her grip on her temper was at this point in time, not when he was so close to his goal. Not when he was so close…

However, Rei broke her silence the moment they hit the end of the trail, recoiling as though she'd just walked into a brick wall. Right down to rubbing a nose that was turning slightly pink. "Ow! What does that dragon have up here? It feels like I just walked into a roadblock of pure Mana."

Larc raised an eyebrow in curiosity, daring to venture a question. "You can feel the flow of Mana?"

"Yeah." Rei was indignant as she stretched a hand out in front of her, wincing when it encountered the air she'd recoiled from. "It's something that's run in my family since before the War for the Eyes. Over the centuries it's weakened a good deal, but it's never vanished entirely. Ever since I was introduced to meditation, my own sense for the flows have gotten stronger." She scooted forward an inch or two. "Problem is that it becomes impossible to block when the flows are this strong."

Larc breathed an internal sigh of relief. It seemed that Rei had, at least for the moment, forgotten her rage with him in the face of the new problem. He dared another question that he considered rather more important to his cause. "Can you fight in them?"

Emeralds flicked to him before they went back to studying the air around her forearm. They still carried reproach, but she did seem willing to leave him simply with her very potent threat. "Yes. With flows this strong you have to treat them like a bathtub of near-scalding water. Ease in slowly, let your skin get used to it." She slid her leading foot into the space where her hand had been and visibly flinched.

Larc watched, fascinated. He could actually _see_ the faintest heat-shimmer around Rei's arm and lower leg; the air danced over her skin like it was a stone on a hot summer's day. Her skin was even turning a pale shade of pink, exactly as though she was immersing herself into the metaphorical bathwater.

"I thought I'd be more used to it since the flows around here are pretty strong," Rei continued absently, sidling forward another inch, "but up here it's ridiculous. If I didn't know that there were none left after the wars ended, I'd swear that there was a Mana stone up here."

"There is."

Rei blinked at him. "Oh. Well, Shade. No wonder you're antsy." What Rei wasn't going to tell him, though, was that the powerful streams of Mana energy that were pouring in from places all over the mountains were actually doing him some good. This strong, her sense brought colors into the mix, and there was a distinctive pattern of rainbow fragments nibbling away at the edges of some inky, mucky-brown-black energy within Larc. And they let her know that it hadn't been Larc's desire to kill the acolytes of Akravator. It gave Rei another reason to keep Drakonis on her list of people to beat into a pulp.

Interestingly enough, his was currently the only name.

Eventually, Rei was able immerse herself into the energy that swirled around the mountaintop and the two companions continued forward the few hundred yards it took to reach a narrow spit of rock at the top. The area reminded Rei vaguely of the outcropping back at Lake Kilma, though Toté's sky-gazing perch wasn't roughly paved, like most of the trail had been here.

Larc marched forward a few strides until he was out in the open, then threw his head back and shouted in challenge. "Akravator! I have come for your Mana in my master's stead!"

_"Dragoon of Drakonis…"_ came the reply from high above, in a voice that was deeper and louder than the screech of a hundred eagles. _"Are you aware of what he is plotting?"_

"You know," muttered Rei, "it _would_ be really nice of you to explain what he's plotting so I can look all smug or something."

Larc ignored her, shouting back up at the sky, "Don't waste my time!"

_"Foolish knave…You have yet to learn fear…"_

The knife-fighter rolled her eyes when Larc yelled, "Akravator, the Underworld awaits you!"

"Right," she told the dragoon still keeping his gaze skyward, "if we survive this, the first thing I'm going to do is teach you some better lines than that clichéd garbage."

"I look forward to it," Larc grinned, "but in the meantime, here he comes!"

And down indeed, did Akravator come, blazing out of the glare of the noonday sun to thunder to a landing before the two fighters. Rei stared upward at the dragon that was as tall as her cottage tree, all long neck and whipping tail and all over a beautiful shade of blue tinted green. He had a beak like a sea-turtle and coral frill around his head, which fanned out as he stamped on his two muscled legs. His forelimbs were combined with his wings, which technically made him a wyvern, now that Rei thought about it, the scholar in her for a moment outweighing even her survival instincts.

Those instincts quickly flatted her inner scholar, though, when that tail-tip went whistling inches over her head, and the knife-fighter quickly got down to business.

Unfortunately, her inner aesthetic and scholar teamed up and took the upper hand again about halfway through the battle. Midstrike Rei hesitated, fervently wishing that she didn't have to help kill this beautiful, intelligent creature, state of her existence in peril notwithstanding. Then she noticed that Akravator seemed to be concentrating a majority of attacks on Larc, rather than her. Any strike in her direction on the dragon's part were thrown almost as an afterthought.

Right until his tail caught her full in the chest and sent her sliding almost to the edge of the cliff. Rei lay there for a good several moments attempting to convince her lungs that taking in air was an immediate need and figuring out if any of her ribs were broken. "Sneaky dragon bastard," she coughed as she lurched back onto her feet. Right. _Now _it was personal.

Inner Aesthetic and Inner Scholar waved a white flag of surrender and let Instincts and Temper take over.

———

When Akravator was little more than a memory and a fading after-image of a light-explosion on their retinas, Larc turned to Rei, who was gingerly pressing the flesh over her ribs and wincing at the tender stinging each touch brought. "Are you injured?"

"Just my pride, mostly," she replied, satisfied that nothing was broken or cracked and that a good bruising was only what she deserved. "And nothing that a few days' healing won't cure."

Larc gave her a crooked grin, the second real smile he'd given her in the entire week despite all the jokes he'd cracked on the way over. "Now who needs to learn how to duck?" he teased lightly, rewarded with a faceful of the lupin flowers that grew all over the mountain. Still wearing that crooked smile, Larc led her to a tiny goat-trail that had been hidden behind a boulder, taking her up to a sheltered cup of rock where a marvelous sight lay before them. A Mana crystal, big as Rei, hovered amidst a shower of rainbow colors, all of it condensing Mana energy. The shape of it was a thick column, pointed at both ends and girdled with more than a dozen smaller points 'round the middle.

"Still pretty small…" Larc mused as he approached. Rei was stuck at where she stood, too dizzied by the colors flooding her senses to do more than stay upright without falling off the mountain. Then Larc turned back to her and offered a leather-bound tome several hundred pages thick, with a worn bone carved with runes laying atop it. "This is a reward from Drakonis," he told her, and urged her to take it.

Rei clung dizzily to a convenient rock and replied faintly, "Why don't you just hold onto those until we get back down the mountain, okay? Right now I couldn't carry a tune, let alone whatever Artifacts you're trying to hand me."

He nodded in understanding and turned back to the stone, reaching out a gauntleted hand/paw and caressing the smooth surface. His entire body stiffened for a moment as the crystal sang out beneath his touch and poured all of itself into him and through him, to the waiting maw of darkness on the far end of the magical binding that tied the wolf-kin to his master, visible to Rei only through the massive amounts of energy exploding fireworks in her head.

Weak shuffling caught her attention, though, and as the flows poured through Larc and faded, her vision cleared enough for her to make out that last acolyte, the one she'd snatched back from Death less than an hour before. Clutching at his bandaged wing-arm, the youth wore grief as heavy as a cloak as he gazed up at the dragoon. "Why…?" he whispered hoarsely. "Why do you do such unspeakable acts?"

Larc remained silent, remorse clear in the down-tilt of his ears. Rei reached out a hand to touch one feathered shoulder. "Because we have no choice," she told the acolyte softly. "Drakonis has us firmly in his grasp, and to do nothing would be worse than even the choices he's forcing us into." And then she led them all back down the mountain.

———————

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	16. Field Trip, Ghost of Nemesis

Hm. I really shouldn't let a month go by without so much as a squeak. It's not really fair to you all, though it does give Tiamat42 a bit more time to write. ;P I'm going to be going on a business trip in April and things are gearing up for a group trip down to Fanime this year, so I apologize in advance if I get this distracted again. For those of you who are going to Fanime and want to meet up, look for either a red-head playing Himura Kenshin, Shin Sawada from Gokusen, or Tachigami from Okami (I'll be wearing a wig, so the red isn't going to be a clue). Unless I get my butt in gear and get used to contacts again, I'll be wearing half-frame glasses.

**Tiamat42: **Did I already send you a reply to this review? We've sent a few messages between us, so now I'm confuzzled. Oh, well. I'll reply anyway, even if it's a repeat. Artifacts: _—nibbles on lip—_ Actually, they are kinda sorta spawning areas (you'll note that she doesn't go anywhere she hasn't had an Artifact for), but you bring up a valid point. Thanks to that, I have one or two interesting ideas, but like Rei's odd sense of direction when it comes to confusing places—Drakonis' castle being the exception—it probably won't be explained until the end. I.E. This would be me, stalling.

There will be angst. It will be brief and will involve getting Rei drunk. But she does feel bad about the Windcallers and Akravator. (She did blink when fighting Akravator, right up until he nailed her in the chest with his tail. Just not very long…) This was my least favorite arc, though, so I'm right there with you.

—_ducks too—_ Why are we ducking?

**Vrtrahex:** Okay, so a lot nerdy. We've had time to practice. I have about four or five chapters written ahead from this point, mixing the Faeries arc, some sidequests, the rest of the Dragon arc and the next step in the Jumi arc. About thirty pages, thereabouts.

**Starlight's Delight:** I already answered yours, but I felt like putting your name here anyway. n,.,n

**YamiGoddess:** _—raises eyebrow—_ Only a bit hyper? _—grins—_ Welcome to the group. Glad to have you. Hyperventilation corner's over there, spazz corner over this-a-way. Glad you're loving the story so far.

———————

Larc was silent for the full two weeks it took for them to travel to the place known throughout the world as the Bone Fortress. It would have taken less, but Rei had insisted that they swing by her home so she could check in on her students and bring Nip along as another set of eyes and lapwarmer. Sometimes they covered ground in that mile-gulping stride, sometimes when they were tired they hitched a ride on one cart or another, so long as it was going the right way. Rei filled the time with idle talk (though never pointless and usually in some form of nature lesson) or played music and sang. The knife-fighter didn't press Larc or try to make him speak back to her. She figured he was trying to reconcile within himself the part of him that was dragoon and the part of him that had been unburied by the Mana Stone, his—for lack of a better word—good side.

Besides, his self-agonizing was as good as any punishment as she could deal out short of turning him into mincemeat.

When they finally came into view of the Fortress late one afternoon, Rei was talking to Larc about the medicines that were famous in this area as they rode in the back of a supply wagon headed for their destination. "—I've been told that the herbs around the Fortress are potent even for their kind," she was saying, half-twisted in place to look where they were going, Nip fluffed contentedly in her lap. "I suppose that means that there's another one of those things around here, too?" Rei wasn't going to say 'Mana Stone' in the hearing of anyone, not even the harmless-looking driver of their ride.

Larc made the first vocalization in days: he grunted absently, doing much the same and peering up the road.

"What dragon is here, Larc?"

"Jajara."

For some reason that Larc didn't understand, that made Rei's eyes gleam in anticipation. "The bone dragon? The one that Deathbringer serves?"

"You know your history."

"I read a lot at home." Rei didn't comment on the fact that Larc had spoken to her more in the past few minutes than he'd done in days, but rather studied the growing view of the dragon-skeleton-turned-fortress in a new light. The dragoon saw that here, at least, he wouldn't have to worry about his companion fighting for him. The light in her eyes was too hungry for another occurrence like with Akravator.

"It's not exactly well known, Rei."

She glanced over at him, then brought her gaze back to their destination. "I've got several books that aren't well known, either. But Jajara…he and his dragoon are the ones that have caused the Jumi the most grief over the centuries."

_That_ caught Larc's attention like nothing else would; he stared at Rei in surprise. "You know more Jumi?" he asked in amazement. "I thought they were all extinct by now."

The corners of Rei's mouth edged down, heading for a scowl. "Not quite, and not for lack of trying. I've a few words to say to those two, and believe me when I say that none of them will be 'Goddess bless'. They have things to answer for, and not only the Jumi." She was remembering a soldier standing in mourning on a rib of stone above a crystal-blue ocean, and a tormented, golden-clad soul that had given her two words as a clue to his salvation…_ 'For Thona, for Thoma…For Elazul, Pearl, and for all the poor people who died because Deathbringer wanted the Seventh Moon…it gets repaid a little today.'_

However, Rei discovered when they passed through the gates into the tiny village that had sprung up around the massive structure, they had to wade through students and Flowerlings, first. She walked over to a green-clad youth kneeling over a scorched stone mortar and pestle, hair-pipes chiming softly when she tilted her head to ask, "What's going on?"

The boy looked up, soot on his cheekbone and one long smear of it across his forehead, and grinned. "Hey! You're the one who helped stop Professor Mephianse from blowing up the world!" he piped in greeting. "You've got half his class shaking in their shoes whenever someone mentions Duma."

Rei winced. "Sorry. I get rather bad-tempered during hot weather."

The boy grinned wider. "So I guess I'm good, then," he joked, waving a hand at nothing to indicate the biting winter air. Nip _chirred_ in agreement, poofing up his thick coat to warm himself up. "Anyway, we're working on our triple-reagent-mixing assignment. Ms. Thesenis said we should make stuff with reagents around here, but we're having no luck at all. Even the Flowerlings are helping us, but we've had nothing but duds." Rei glanced around and shivered in sympathy. The tropics-loving little creatures were all wrapped in heavy cloaks to protect their tender flesh from the cold, and the knife-fighter was easily able to detect a heat-spell amulet worn by each one. They seemed happy enough though, despite the weather.

"Sounds like it's been a bad day," she commented idly.

"Yeah," her new friend agreed. "Could you do me a favor, though? Could you go and get three reagents from the guys collecting them over by that creepy skull door? Bring 'em back and I'll mix 'em."

Larc sighed heavily at the intrigued look his companion now wore. Nip was already bouncing eagerly towards the open gate leading towards the Fortress itself, his mistress not far behind.

He was never going to get to slay that damn dragon at this rate.

It took a couple of tries, but Rei soon collected a promising mixture of faerie scales from the student nearest the dragon-skull portcullis, some spotted silver mushrooms from a pastel-colored female Flowerling, and star sparkles from a brighter male of the same species. Eagerly she trotted back into the village and poured her ingredients into the mortar of the waiting magician-in-training.

The boy took a deep breath and gave Rei and Larc a hopeful smile. "Let's give it a shot!" he said as he began to powder everything together. Without warning, a fountain of golden sparks welled up, engulfing the student for a brief moment and leaving the mortar's bowl brimming with a bright orange liquid. "Alright! We made some Triagran!"

"Triagran?" Rei queried, unfamiliar with the name. Green nodded and starting decanting the potion into a clay bottle.

"When little kids take this, it makes their heads explode! One time, Bud drank some of this by mistake, and he ran around all day!"

Laughter bubbled out of Rei, the knife-fighter grinning back at the cheerful student. "I guess he hasn't changed much. He's still not allowed in the kitchen without one of us to keep an eye on him, but at least he doesn't blow up parts of the workshop anymore."

Green replied with his own, piping laughter and rummaged around in a pouch on his belt. "I can't give you any Triagran," he said apologetically, "but here, take this!" And he carefully tilted a handful of yellowish oblong seeds into her palms. "And tell Bud 'Sage says hi' for me, would you?"

"Sure."

A loud roar split the air just then, powerful enough to rattle the shutters of the huts, completely ruining the good mood that had been going. A nearby female Flowerling looked up from her herb-gathering to gaze pensively at the Fortress. "And again…What is that strange voice?"

Rei and Larc only looked at each other. They knew what it was.

But they had to play along, Rei supposed, and gestured for Larc to do the talking for a change. The wolf-kin cleared his throat and asked gruffly, "What happened?"

Green fidgeted uneasily. "Well, actually…"

Another student came forward from another work area, dressed in the golden-brown robes of one of the teachers Rei hadn't met yet. His silver hair gleamed under the thin sunlight as he explained, "We've been using the herbs and minerals around here as reagents for our potions—"

Green interrupted with an enthusiastic, "The herbs on the hill will cure anything!"

Brown shot him a mild glare. "—but lately there's been a weird voice coming from inside that bony castle. People say that an old dragon called the Dragon of Knowledge lives there."

"Dragon of Knowledge?" repeated Green, looking a little confused. "Is that like a lizard?"

Another roar echoed around them, scaring the silver-haired boy back to his workstation with a yelp and sending the Flowerlings scurrying. Rei looked over at Larc, a wicked grin beginning to curl her lips. "Sounds like our cue, wolf-boy."

"Oh, by all means, ladies first," Larc rumbled, folding himself into a courtly bow. Rei swept her cloak around her as she dipped into a playful curtsey and strode for the inner gate, back to the entrance of the stronghold that was now blessedly free of students and Flowerlings. Nip was a faithful caramel shadow at her heels with Larc not far behind them, anticipation making his wolfish tail bush.

Curious, Rei walked around the front and sides of the skull, examining the closed jaws in puzzlement. "So…how do we get in, anyway?"

"We knock and ask pretty please," replied the dragoon, and banged on a spot below a jagged canine tooth with the hilt of an axe. The sound reverberated through the skull and echoed louder in the air than it should have, right down into Rei's winter-kissed bones. Then Larc pulled her back several steps with an impatient, "Here he comes!"

The air hissed as a blade cut through it from the other side of nothing, a black-armored man coming through in pieces much like another walking spirit that Rei had seen within the last few months. The newcomer brandished a sword the same pitch hue as his armor at them, booming, "Away with you, humans! This place is not for you!"

"_Why_ does everyone keep calling me a human, damn it?.!" Rei demanded of the sky. "I'm a sprite! S-P-R-I-T-E! Sprite! And you don't even _look_ human, wolf-boy."

"We're bipedal and we talk. It confuses people."

"Well, just for that I ain't going!" Not that she would have left anyway, but Rei was amused at the latest exercise of Larc's dry sense of humor. She wanted to see how long it would last.

Not as long as she might have hoped, unfortunately, for the gate-keeper finally looked at Larc and saw him for what he was. "A dragoon!.?" gasped their road-block. "Could it be…?"

"We have come to see Jajara," Larc stated calmly, a half-smirk still playing around his muzzle. "Let us through!"

Rei ducked the unannounced swing of the black sword as it whistled through the space her head had been. The guard—who had been floating about a foot off the ground, Rei finally noticed—caught his balance again and swore, "Never, evil ones! I shall exterminate you here and send you back to the Underworld!"

Rei caught the next swing in the cross of her knives and exerted her not-inconsiderable strength to push the knight back, the battle officially joined. She spared Larc an irritated glance while side-stepping the flying gauntlet the black-armored man had just shot out. "And that's another thing that irritates me, Larc," she observed. Another avoidance, her blades and his biting deep into metal shell. "I'm prejudged as evil just because of the company I'm keeping. We're going to have to do something about that."

"Later," gritted the dragoon, caught in a grapple and working to keep from being thrown. "Just help me lay this twit back in his grave!"

"Patience," Rei grunted as she planted a flying kick to the blackened visor, sending the knight tumbling back, "is a virtue!"

"Unfortunately that isn't one of mine!"

———

Dusting herself off after the black knight had been dealt with, Rei favored the wolf-man with an approving smile. "Your commentary is improving," she told him cheerfully. "Now, how did you say this thing opened?"

Larc walked over to the skull and banged on it again with the blunt end of an axe; with a rumbling creak, the bone jaws parted, the upper half of the skull rising into the air to reveal a passage into the fortress. Rei whistled once in appreciation before following her companion down the dragon's throat.

Inside was lit fitfully by torches and the game winter sunlight that crept in through high narrow windows. Cavernous, practically, though a bit more richly appointed than the wide spaces in Mekiv, what with the marble flooring, walls, and the few tapestries scattered here and there.

It still gave Rei a niggling of claustrophobia. Eyeing the three flat-topped quasi-pedestals that took up the middle of the twenty-foot open space between the door leading out and the door leading goddess-only-knew-where, Rei walked forward until she neared them, Larc a cautious specter at her heels.

"Looks like some kind of trap," rumbled the dragoon, eyeing the pedestal-things with as much distrust as the knife-fighter. "Careful here…"

Nip, either not noticing or simply not caring that his pet and her friend were walking on eggshells, merely bounded for the far door with the intent to head upwards. He hit the ground by the farthest pedestal, then squeaked in alarm and reversed when the floor began to rumble and shake.

"What the!.?" was the last thing Rei heard before the ground gave way beneath her, plunging her into darkness.

———

"Ugh…" groaned our favorite sprite after what seemed like an eternity of black, opening her eyes to a ceiling of slate-blue stone and cobwebs. Her hand twitched, informing her that it lay on what was either old, dead rushes, or something rather more unpleasant…With a disgusted yelp Rei bolted to her feet, running her hands over her body to erase the feeling of lying on old, dried bones that lay in a piled mockery of a bed, the pitiful remains of rushes dispersed here and there through the mess. "Oh, _gross_!"

Once she convinced her skin to stop trying to crawl off to find the nearest torch, Rei took several long breaths and stock of her situation. She was in a tiny room hardly more than six feet by ten feet across, containing little more than herself, her 'mattress', and a boatload of cobwebs that held only dust. There was one door leading out, and she took it, thrilled to find it unlocked. Beyond was a stairway leading around the edges of another room filled with yet more dust, bones, and web, whose walls held a few worn, moth-eaten tapestries and one or two coats of arms.

Rei picked a direction and started walking.

Ten minutes' exploring yielded two fights and a room similar to the one she'd found herself in, with a large skull and a single lamp made of a tall pole, a bright tongue of flame dancing in midair on top of it. When Rei approached the skull, the flame drifted down from the lamp and vanished through the curve of bone, a male's voice echoing from within. "So you young'uns were trapped in Bone Fortress, too…I'll help you out!"

And with that, a doorway opened from solid wall. Rei blinked, thanked the skull, and edged through the space. From behind her she heard that same ghost's voice call, "If you get lost, just talk to my friends! They'll help you out, too!" She called thanks again over her shoulder, then froze at the sight of a suit of armor standing in the small room beyond.

The knight offered her no violence, though; instead, he swung his sword to the side in a lunge, another passage sliding open through the cobwebs. Still wary, Rei offered thanks to the knight and went through before he could change his mind.

Beyond was a third small room, this one with some sort of drapery choked with dust hung from the back wall. Sitting in the middle of the floor, right in front of a treasure chest and _chirr_ing mournfully, was her beloved Nip.

The Rabite perked up and joyfully bounced up to her, rubbing himself against her legs and squeaking happily. The flare of irritation she'd had for him vanished. Rei sighed. "This is the last time I'm taking you dungeon-crawling," she told him firmly. Nip replied with several chirps in what sounded like total agreement, and bounded eagerly out of the room just ahead of her.

They spent almost an hour searching for the missing Larc on the lower levels with no luck, though Rei discovered what those platform-things were—triggers for the elevator that went all the way up to the third floor. Which made Rei wonder; this was a fortress, so why did it only have three floors? Dragons of any flavor were weird, she decided, and kept looking.

The third floor got them results. The second Rei stepped off the elevator, a feminine voice asked from thin air, "Are you looking for Larc?" There came the quiet hiss of knives cutting air, and the kneeling shape of the female wolf-kin that Rei had seen last at Norn phased into view from the middle of a flickering circle of green light. The female rose, tilting her head to one side. This close and stilled, Rei could see that the very fluffy thing spilling from the back of the dragoon's armor really _was_ her tail, and it was bushed out like a bottlebrush. "Why do you serve Drakonis?" Larc's sister asked, still speaking politely. "You must know why he's trying to kill the dragons!"

Rei fidgeted, then cleared her throat. "Actually, I don't know. I keep pestering Larc to tell me, but it's like trying to get a straight answer from Wisdom Pokiehl. So I'm pretty much in the dark about it all. Stupid fuzz-breath," she muttered in the general direction of the ceiling.

Sierra sighed deeply, hanging her head as though Rei had handed her a death-sentence. "I see…I'm sorry," she continued, raising her head to stare at Rei, "but you must die. Without you, Drakonis will surely give up. And…that way…I will not have to kill Larc," she finished in a whisper.

Rei immediately unsheathed her knives and dropped into a ready crouch. "Sugar, I may not be happy with what I'm stuck doing, but _damned_ if I die here! And you're an idiot if you think Drakonis won't just try again with someone else if I lose."

With a mournful howl, Sierra flung herself at Rei…and proceeded to get her furry butt handed to her. When Rei wasn't darting in to land muscle-numbing blows with the hilts of her knives, she was letting Nip chomp the dragoon while she put some space between her and Sierra to play an instrument. Undine's icy effects slowed Sierra's responses further, until she collapsed under a hard strike to her collarbone.

"By the gods!" the wolf-girl gasped, prone on the floor, "Your powers are too strong! But someday…someday I will stop you!"

"You're welcome to try," muttered Rei to empty air, her opponent already gone in another flicker of green light. Something glinted from where the wolf-girl had lain, and turned out to be a key when Rei went to investigate. Turning it over in her hands, the knife-fighter wondered what it could be to…and then remembered a room back on the second floor. Another knight had turned her away from going farther into a room, saying something about a brand….

Rei blinked. Looked again at the key. "It _can't_ be that easy…" she murmured to herself, but she turned anyway and took the elevator down. She went back to that room, brighter lit than most thanks to it facing the proper direction to catch the afternoon sunlight, and showed the key to the knight standing guard there.

He stepped aside, and another hidden door opened.

"Gee, thanks, Sierra," muttered Rei as she went through. "You're a peach." Inside, she found more tapestries, a skull, and Larc lying unconscious on the floor. The knife-fighter leaned against the doorway and called playfully, "Are you going to sleep the whole day away, fuzz-breath?"

Larc stirred, a frown creasing a line between his eyes. "My sister…" he moaned.

"Really needs to practice guarding her left flank," Rei finished. "Wakey, wakey, Larc. Can't kill dragons if you're lounging around."

Larc's eyes popped open and he sprang to his feet, axes out as though expecting an attack. When all he saw was Rei smirking at him from the safety of the doorway, he put his weapons away, looking abashed. "I'm sorry. I can't believe I would fall for such a trap."

"Hardly your fault," Rei told him, aiming a scowl down at Nip. The Rabite twitched his ears and contrived to look cute. He could tell by the looks on the others' faces that they weren't buying it at all, and tossed in a remorse-filled chirrup to see if that would work. When that failed, he flicked his soft ears in irritation and chittered, wanting to know what he was supposed to do about it _now_, when things had already happened.

Rolling her eyes, Rei moved a shoulder in a fluid half-shrug and tilted her head towards the farther room. "There's an elevator that way. Third floor's got some stairs that go up and there doesn't seem to be any more traps."

"Good enough. It's a place to start, anyway." Larc gave her an approving nod and gestured politely for her to lead the way. One thing Rei would say about him, if anyone asked, was that Larc at least knew how to be polite. And it didn't half-choke him to be so, she thought amusedly to herself, thoughts suddenly zinging off to a memory of bright blue eyes watching her apprentice warily.

Then she shook her head, stuffing all thoughts of handsome Jumi knights into a little cupboard at the back of her mind. Now was a very bad time to get distracted, and that was exactly what Elazul was, in any way, shape, or form. Daydreams later, havoc now.

Rei sighed, and wished vaguely that the day was over already so that she could move on to tomorrow and the hope that the end of this adventure might lead to some normalcy for a change. She could have _sworn_ she'd put in an order for some at the end of last month…

———

The third floor hadn't yielded much in exploration, other than a few rather irritating monsters. Rei really did hate those tomato-teddy-bear things, it would take her _hours_ to clean out the soot and holes they left in her cloak. But the exploration was brief; there just wasn't anything up here but a room or two on either side of the long staircase. Curiosity satisfied, the knife-fighter trailed her companion up the wood-and-stone steps, climbing up into clear blue, wintry sky.

At the top, there was simply a covered wooden bridge, old and worn, stretching to the other side of a deep chasm that looked like it went down through the ground at the bottom of the fortress. Rei thought about making a comment mentioned how at odds the bridge was with the surrounding décor, but decided against it as they began to cross it.

It wasn't her fortress, after all. Why should she criticize?

About halfway across, she braved the silence to ask a question of Larc. "The way this place is built, you'd think they'd expect an army. Has anyone actually braved this place to attack it directly?"

_"Bring a whole army if you wish!"_ thundered a ghostly voice from everywhere and nowhere at once. Rei thought it sounded male, over the pounding of her adrenaline-kicked heart. _"You will not pass!"_ Then the voice made a startled sound, laughter echoing around them. Larc and Rei scooted closer together, back to back in the middle of the bridge. _"Why, if it isn't Larc the Conqueror!"_

Larc sneered in the general direction of the ceiling. "Well, well, if it isn't Deathbringer…"

More ghostly laughter. _"Now I see…So you are the servant to Drakonis…You should be quite the opponent. Hahahahaha! To think that we would meet again like this after a hundred years!"_

"How long have you been dead, wolf-boy?" muttered Rei to the dragoon, as a massive figure the size of a Du'Inke crashed down onto the bridge, proving its solidarity beyond any shadow of doubt. Larc muttered back that he'd been dead a while, thanks, and that she should really be paying attention to the giant man in elaborate armor and skull face-plate. Deathbringer, once the fifteenth Emperor of the Enaanshalc Empire and once known as Irzoile, let out a war cry that echoed off the ceiling and charged.

Larc and Rei split, Larc once again drawing the blunt of the attacks since his weapons were more easily thrown than Rei's knives. Her golden blades were considered irrelevant by the armored man—right until they bit through three inches of solid, enchanted metal into his undead flesh and proceeded to carve away chunks.

Howling in pain, Deathbringer flung Rei off before she could avoid his massive arm, the knife-fighter for once unable to accommodate for her unexpected flight. She hit the bridge hard, a snap echoing through her head as one of her arms bent the wrong way. She left a knife quivering in the wood as her body continued to roll, coming up breathless with pain but on her feet and ready to dodge any more of those blows.

Nip hovered protectively in front of her as Rei dug through one of her pack's side pockets, teeth gritted against the agony of a broken arm—and probably her collarbone, given how it was grinding with every move—until she came up with one of her precious vials of insta-heal. Larc shouted if she was okay, most of his attention centered on the mailed fist being held off by his axes. Rei called back that she was peachy so long as broken bones didn't count and that he should mind his own business, stupid furball! He was the one who had a dragon-sized dragoon trying to beat on him!

Relief poured through the sprite as her potion went to work, realigning bone and knitting the pieces back together. Less than a minute after she'd been flung to the ground, Rei sprang back into the fight and proceeded to teach Deathbringer the lesson that Larc had memorized back in the Norn Peaks.

Don't piss off the wildcat. You will get seriously clawed.

Pouncing Cat was followed by the Mana-charged attack Rei called Dance of Roses, which wrapped Deathbringer in a tangle of blooming rose vines and ripped pieces of his armor away. Larc joined in with his own attacks, including one that somehow summoned up a torrent of boulders to pound away at the much bigger, undead dragoon. Rei made sure she was perched up on Deathbringer's head for that, knives slicing away at his eyes through the mask while she waited for the boulders to vanish.

Under the assault of two expert fighters and one determined Rabite, the conclusion was inevitable. And although it took longer than any other fight Rei had ever been in, eventually Deathbringer fell to their blades, vanishing into thin air as his undead body dissolved, the Mana sustaining it having been cut away. Around the panting trio, his booming voice was a fading echo.

_"Hahahahaha! Most impressive! You just might be the one…"_

Larc sheathed his axes, shoulders slumped beneath his armor in weariness. "You've nothing to lose," he murmured, though whether it was directed at Rei or at Deathbringer, the knife fighter wasn't sure. The wolf-kin raised his head and took a deep breath, voice barely audible when he said, "But I suppose that…neither do I."

His whole body shook, a rippling motion that seemed to throw off whatever emotion he was dealing with like water, and Larc turned to Rei. "Are you alright?"

"I'm good," she reassured him, flexing the arm that had been broken. Her knife had been yanked out of the bridge and now sat safely at her hip with its twin. "It's a good thing I packed extra vials of healing potion. How about you, Larc?"

"I'm dead," he replied somewhat sadly. "How much worse can I be?"

Rei studied him for a moment, then pointed out as she dug in her pack again, "Well, there's dead, and then there's _dead_, dead. You're still walking and talking, so I think you've still got a few feet to go before you hit rock bottom. Here." She tossed a vial at him, fixing him with an expectant look until the dragoon gave in and swallowed the potion down. Nip chattered encouragement, his Rabite constitution already taking care of what few minor injuries he'd picked up.

Pain lines that Rei hadn't noticed until they were gone smoothed away from around Larc's eyes. The red-clad dragoon straightened a little more, nodding his thanks to his friend while handing back the empty vial. Rei grinned at him, clapped him on the shoulder, and together they walked into the heart of Jajara's stronghold.

The chamber beyond the bridge had the highest ceiling of anywhere Rei had ever been, counting the caverns of Mekiv and anything in Leires. Everything was smooth marble but for a few fallen pillars and a gate made of (Rei shuddered) human or sprite bones that blocked the way into a much smaller temple-like building, tucked away into the back of the room. And Rei's skin immediately started prickling the moment she stepped into the room.

"I sense the power of Mana…" Larc murmured, his furry ears swiveling back and forth. Rei merely raised an arm to show him the skin growing steadily pinker. Larc noticed and growled. "That blasted Jajara! He must be close! Jajara!!" he howled towards the ceiling, "In the stead of my master Drakonis I have come to slay you!"

"And you backslide into cliché," Rei sighed. "I hafta give you credit for the creative wording, though."

Larc's reply was lost in a raspy thundering from somewhere above them. _"Drakonis…" _it hissed in disappointment, _"Yet do you still selfishly crave Mana? Have we not seen enough bloodshed? Foolishness! Utter foolishness!"_

Rei paused, taken aback by Jajara's words. "Hold on a second," she muttered aloud to herself. "Either dragons can change their scales—when they have them—or that book I picked up was biased as all Salamander's hell."

"Don't have a crisis of conscience on me now," growled Larc as Jajara made the expected dramatic entrance from above. Though, unlike Akravator, the bone dragon actually had a ceiling to crash through, first, bringing down the green marble busts of a young man and woman with him. The two fighters rolled away from the falling debris, Nip safely caught in his sprite's arms as she tucked into a somersault and sprang onto a fallen pillar before turning to get her first look at Jajara.

Upon seeing him she wasn't certain if she should laugh or cringe.

Take a chicken. Kill it and pluck it, then stick it out in the sun to dry until all the moisture is gone and the skin is like stiff leather. Give it the head of a lizard with a mouthful of impressive teeth, and a pair of shadowed, glowing green eyes. Aside from having a few more toes than a chicken and a lot of spines where bones ended, that was pretty much what Jajara looked like to Rei. Her skin crawled at the thought of getting close to something that looked like it needed to have been buried ages ago; the knife-fighter spent a moment thanking the Goddess that he didn't _smell_ like it, either.

"Get off your ass, woman, and help me!" Larc roared at her, diving into the fight with all of Rei's normal abandon, where it had all apparently gone since she wasn't feeling any of it right now.

Rei gulped and looked down at Nip. The Rabite chittered at her, tone obviously that of 'You're on your own'. Sighing, the knife-fighter applied some steel to her backbone and went in to give Larc a hand.

The fight went much like the one with Deathbringer, though the only bones broken so far belonged to the dragon. Rei discovered that, appearances aside, Jajara actually had very soft hide; it was just stretched so thin over his bones that it _looked _horrible. After a suitable amount of damage, however, the dragon screeched and broke apart, leaving Rei to sidestep away from where she'd been.

"Right," she informed no one in particular, "this is, hands down, the creepiest fight I've ever bee—"

_Rumble-rumble-rumble…_

Rei stared, horrified, at Larc's prepared stance and the axes he held ready. "Oh, please tell me you're joking…" she pleaded. He shook his head as all of Rei's nerve endings sang with a sudden spike of Mana energy.

From the floor where they lay, the pieces of Jajara rose into the air and started fitting back together with ease. Though not so well as the original shape. As the reptilian head rose and glared down at them, his legs became misshapen arms and his wings reattached wrong side-over and upside-down. He used his wings to scoop up the busts that had been lying on the floor, and proceeded to begin Round Two.

Ten minutes later the two fighters were patching themselves back together, Nip a comforting, fuzzy weight in his owner's lap while Larc used a cloth to rub bruise-potion into the massive discolorations spreading across large portions of her arms, legs, and back. A few drops of insta-heal had been used to bring down the swelling of a goose-egg bump near Rei's temple, a gift from some falling stone that Jajara had conjured up.

Larc already wore a few bandages himself, soaked in the bruise-potion in order to seep through his thick fur. He'd had better luck in his places to dodge than Rei; Jajara's spell-based attacks seemed to have gravitated specifically to her, while the wolf-man took the brunt of the more physical attacks.

"How's the head?" he rumbled in a near-whisper, soaking the cloth in more potion.

"Still ringing a little. Though I'm not sure if it's just from the knock to my skull or from that bone twit's yowl of _'Drakonis! That monster almost destroyed us all!'_ or whatever he said when he went ka-plooie the second time." Rei pouted, running the fingers of her free hand through Nip's fur to comfort herself. "Or maybe it's all the Mana energy. For some reason, though, it doesn't sting as bad as Akravator's did. I guess I'm just getting used to it."

Larc wrinkled his nose in an expression of amusement. "You have been exposed to pretty high amounts." He capped the bottle of bruise-balm and put it and the rag away, offering a clawed hand to the knife-fighter. "Now, can you stand up yet?"

"Stand? Larc, say the word and I'll be getting my butt out of here as fast as I can," Rei joked, catching his wrist and getting pulled to her feet. She squeezed his wrist once she was up, catching his gaze with her own. "Seriously. I don't like it here."

Larc gave her a sympathetic smile as he let go, leading them all towards that fenced-in shrine in the back. A flex of his arms pulled the gate open, snapping the sinews that had held it shut for Goddess only knew how long. Within the elegant little building was the Mana stone, casting a myriad of rainbows onto the walls around it. Rei blinked, winced, but for once stood steady against the energy singing against her skin.

"I knew I sensed the power of Mana here," rumbled Larc, striding over to the stone. "So, thanks to this guy, the herbs around here are imbued with great power." His voice grew disapproving. "And Jajara tried to hide that by building this castle. Tch, how greedy." Larc glanced over to her and an eyebrow rose. "You look like you want to ask me something."

"The wolf is psychic," Rei teased gently. "Tell me about Drakonis, Larc. How does he get the Mana you take?"

Larc shrugged. "When I locate a Mana stone, our lord receives its power directly. I'm not entirely clear on the 'how'."

Rei frowned at him. "There you go with that 'our lord' stuff again. I told you, Larc, Drakonis is no lord of mine. I don't serve anyone."

He had the grace to look abashed. "Sorry. Habit, I suppose."

"I'll break you of it by the time this whole thing is over, I'm sure." Rei looked around at the dim cavernous room beyond the shrine, conflicting emotions running across her face. "So, what happens to this place after you've taken the stone?"

Larc looked around with her. "Once this place loses its Mana, it will wither and die," he replied, sounding distant. "Then, no ghost will stand guard here. You shouldn't think about that too much."

"Why?" Rei's eyes looked past the walls, across the miles to a curve of stone overlooking the sea. "That's one thing I won't regret about this task. I've cleared a debt because of it."

"A debt?" Dark eyebrows knitted together. "To whom?"

"A soldier. His brother died in the service of Deathbringer, Emperor as he is and was, and so was not allowed to rest even as a shade." Rei's mouth curved into a gentle smile. "Maybe he can get some sleep now."

Larc stood watching her for a moment, as though putting this into his pile of pieces belonging to the puzzle that was Rei, before coming back to himself. He reached into his pack and offered her a staff twined with leaves. "Here, this is from Drakonis. He takes great interest in your accomplishments. And there is but one Mana stone left…" His whole body vibrated a little in eagerness. "Our day of return is near…"

Rei reached over and bonked him lightly in the head with the staff he'd given her, mere moments before it disappeared in a swirl of green light and leaves. "Don't get ahead of yourself, Larc," she chided him, scooping up Nip and heading back the way they'd come. "We haven't gotten to the dragon a certain someone serves, and I really doubt she's going to be overjoyed to see us."

Larc fell into step beside her, glancing at her sideways. "You said she needs to guard her left flank better, earlier," he remarked as though commenting on the weather. "Does that mean she was here?"

"I'd bet you anything short of my life that she's the one who set that trap for us," Rei told him in way of reply. "Let's just say I'm not exactly high on her list of favorite people right now."

"Why?"

Their voices faded from the now-empty room that had once been the haven for knowledge. "I didn't just lay down and die."

—————


	17. End of Dragon Arc, Cage of Dreams

**Starlight's Delight:** It's always good to know that someone notices the little things. (And seriously, who the hells designed Jajara and what were they _on_?)

**Tiamat42:**_—laughs—_ I'll make sure to bring flowers for your funeral. Do your prefer carnations, lilies, roses, or Flowerlings?

**YamiGoddess:** It's official, nobody liked the Dragon Arc. Myself included. And apparently computer failure, like that nasty virus, has been going around. One of my RL friends has a laptop that's fritzing and some of my comp accessories are going into their death throes. We should form a club! ;p

Okay, boys and girls (_are_ there guys reading this?), this is going to be an extra long chapter since the three pieces were too small to leave on their own, and I was too lazy to post them separately. It just wouldn't have worked well. Enjoy!

(And, hey, does anyone know where the rest of my reviewers went?)

—————

The place called White Forest rested near the vast seas that had no name that Rei was aware of, more than a week's travel north of Polpota Harbor. Somehow it, like the Norn Peaks, had missed out on the message that it was supposed to be deep winter. Within the first few moments of stepping foot into the borders of the forest Rei had needed to take off her cloak; she'd stuffed it into her pack with a grimace, missing the cold already.

Larc hadn't missed the expression. "You really don't like the heat, do you?"

"No. The worst time ever was the time I had to go chasing down a renegade mage in Duma Desert in the middle of Salamander-cursed summer." She looked around at the green-crowned trees and the flowers rioting with ferns and broad-leaved plants on either side of a deer-path that led into the forest. "So. We're here for the third stone?"

Larc nodded. "This is the territory of Vadise, the White Dragon. But there's something in this forest that…throws off my senses."

Rei paused in the middle of inspecting some of the closer flowers with an eye to potential medicinal purposes. "What do you mean?" Nip was eyeing the vegetation with the vague idea of possibly making them into a meal.

"The one who wants to keep me away," answered Larc, showing definite signs of unease. "You'll see. I'll concentrate on picking up her scent…you should lead. Don't worry about the details, it'll be alright." Rei didn't point out that he might have yelled his sister's name aloud with all his hinting; instead, she merely loosened her knives in their sheathes and started walking.

The scenery was very nice, and Rei found herself following a tiny thread of intuition that pulled her along the twistings and turnings of the paths with hardly a misstep. Every time they took a turn, Larc encouraged her, having learned not to question Rei's strange knowledge about places she'd never been to. The farther they went, the stronger the tingle of Mana on Rei's skin grew.

At last, Larc warned her that they were nearing the dragon's lair; Vizel gold knives were unsheathed and began to spin lazy arcs across scarred knuckles, while the winter sunlight shone on the polished edges of Larc's Granz steel hand-axes. The two walked into a wide clearing, where sunlight lay in patches on the moss-covered floor and glittered on a small pond off to one side.

A massive tree stood on the far side of the clearing, leaning to one side and as moss-draped as the rest of the clearing. Massive roots were exposed and hung with Spanish moss, wrapping around a massive stone and forming a set of three steps twice the height of Rei or even her brother. On the curve of the top-most root knelt Sierra, expectation in her eyes.

"Larc…" She spoke into the silence of the clearing—not even the birds sang here despite the peace of the place. "So you have finally come this far."

"Sierra, where is Vadise?" Larc demanded.

In reply, Sierra shot to her feet, pointing at Larc accusingly. "Larc!! Can you not see what Drakonis is trying to do?" When he stayed silent, gazing up at her, she went on, desperation seizing on her and sharpening her voice. "He did not order you to slay dragons for the sake of revenge! He is trying to snatch Mana energy, the source of all power in the world!"

"That I know," Larc answered at last.

Rei was expecting dramatic music to start playing or for Sierra to borrow a trick from Inspector Boyd and shoot steam for her ears, but so far was disappointed. "Fool!" the wolf-girl cried. "Do you not see what would happen if Drakonis returned to the surface?"

Larc snapped alert at that one. "Enough, Sierra!" he barked.

"Larc?" his sister faltered.

"If Drakonis returns to the surface, then I, his knight, shall return as well." (Feeling like a complete third wheel, Rei sat down on the ground and began to practice knife tricks.)

Sierra was staring at her brother like he'd grown an extra head. "What are you saying…?"

Larc let his weapons hang low. "Please, Sierra…don't interfere!" he begged.

Pain shone in Sierra's eyes as she looked down at her brother. Rei was working on flipping her knives and catching them by the hilt every time. She was up to twenty-three. "I am a dragoon," the wolf-girl said sadly. "My duty it to protect order in the world, like my master, the dragon. I cannot let anyone disrupt the order in the world! Even if it is my brother!" And with that, she crouched into an attack pose, apparently fully ready to launch herself the forty-plus feet down at the two fighters below.

_"Stop, Sierra!"_ commanded a melodic voice from thin air. Rei jumped to her feet as a dragon appeared, stretched out on the steps with her head only a foot or two below Sierra's feet. The knife-fighter gazed in wonder at the beast: she was all over long, snowy fur that gleamed in the sunlight, with shining, dark eyes that gazed at the gathering, an expression that Rei couldn't read. About four feet from the end of a tail that was obviously muscled despite the thick fur covering it, rose-colored fabric was wrapped for a handspan and the ends allowed to hang. It matched the two bands tied around two long locks of fur that rested against snowy shoulders. The dragon's feet, like her brethren's had been, were birdlike in nature and scaled in pale, pale blue, tipped with ivory claws that shone bright as her fur.

And Rei couldn't bring herself to raise a blade against this beautiful creature who must be Vadise and Sierra's master. Her knives lay, actually forgotten, on the forest floor where they'd dropped at the sight of the closest thing to a Flammie that the world had seen in millennia.

_"A brother and sister must not shed the blood they share," _scolded the dragon in that melodic voice that sounded like water flowing.

Larc, completely oblivious to the fact that he'd be on his own in a fight against Vadise, took an aggressive step forward and demanded, "Vadise! Tell me where the Mana stone lies! Then you will not meet the same fate as the other two dragons."

"Larc!!" yelled his scandalized sister.

Vadise studied the scarlet-armored dragoon for a moment, then dipped her head. _"I see…"_ She arched her long neck to gaze at the northern side of the clearing, and said, _"The Mana stone lies straight down that path."_

Larc put away his axes as Rei craned her head around him to see a foot-path winding past the trees, half-hidden by bushes and shadows. "Good dragon," the wolf-man commented, mocking, and strode down the path without a backwards glance.

He never heard the quiet murmur of Vadise. _"Go, Larc. And then see the error of your ways."_

———

Larc stood in front of the third Mana stone, feeling triumph burn his death-cold blood into a semblance of the fire he'd felt when he was still alive. "I shall soon be free," he told the air, riding the edge of his success for all it was worth. "Of course, so will Drakonis," he added dismissively, "but I have a plan. Do not worry, Sierra…" And he put his hand on the stone, feeling the energy rush through him for the final time.

———

Rei was still standing where he'd left her when Larc returned, Nip a meek caramel powderpuff at her feet. Her knives had been retrieved and resheathed, but other than that it looked like the knife-fighter hadn't moved. Approaching her, he let a regretful smile creep onto his face. "Your duty is fulfilled," he told Rei, stopping a few feet away. "You need not stay with me any longer. This is all I can give you."

The sprite caught the bar of Ishe platinum he lobbed at her with ease, eyes widening at the weight of it as her hand dipped despite herself. All she could do was stare at the dragoon as though he were mad, for Ishe platinum was rare and valuable no matter what part of the world you were in, and try to put her thanks for the gift into her eyes.

It seemed to have worked, for Larc came even closer, curling a hand around the back of her neck and gently pulling forward until he could bump his forehead with hers. "Thank you," he told her, and was gone before she could say anything at all.

She stared down the path where she'd seen his tail disappear until Vadise's voice pulled her back to the now. _"Rei. It seems you have been dragged into this."_

"By the scruff of the neck, hissing and spitting all the way," confirmed the knife-fighter, using the cat comparison that the males around her used so often.

Vadise nodded, acknowledging it. _"But there's no going back now. If Drakonis is not stopped, the entire world will suffer at his hands. I know this may sound strange, but you mustn't turn your back on this."_

"My lady," Rei told her, placing a hand over her heart, "I had absolutely no intention of doing so." A smile pulled her lips back, so sharp it would put her knives to shame. "Besides," she added, "I owe Drakonis a poor turn or two for blackmailing me into this little adventure."

_"Indeed?"_Vadise closed her eyes. _"Thank you, Rei. Now, I wish to ask a favor of you. Show me your powers!"_

"Show you my…?" Sierra jumped down from her perch and unsheathed her knives, advancing on Rei with expectation written in every line of her body. "Oh, come on," Rei protested. "I already beat Sierra once! Unless she's learned to guard her left side better, I'm going to do it again!"

"Please," her opponent begged. "I want to do this."

Vizel gold glittered and spun as leather-wrapped hilts thunked into their master's palms. "Fine," growled Rei. "But this is the last damn time!"

Sierra leaped at her with a war-cry, knives flashing. Rei ducked under the strike, coming back up within the dragoon's guard and landing a solid uppercut on the furry chin. Sierra's chin snapped up and back with the force and added weight of a dagger-hilt, forcing her back into a stumble.

Rei pressed the advantage, one hand grabbing the front of the green armor and hauling Sierra into the real version of the grappling throw she'd once used on Bud and Lisa, all those months ago. With a startled yelp the wolf-girl went flying, landing in a breathless heap several feet away.

Her opponent jumped aside at the last moment as an elemental attack struck where she'd just been standing, Rei sprinting to where Sierra was just picking herself up. Furry ears swiveling back, Sierra dropped and attempted to sweep Rei's feet out from under her. The sprite threw herself into a moonsault jump, whirling into a roundhouse punch the second her feet touched ground.

Sierra wasn't there.

Rei flung herself away again, only to have a knife scrape along her armor and knock her off balance. Sierra managed a solid kick to the gut before Rei managed to scramble free, another elemental attack forcing the sprite farther from the dragoon.

The back-and-forth continued for a couple of minutes, then Rei landed a solid punch that laid Sierra out cold on the ground, hopefully out for a minute or two. Not allowed a moment to catch her breath, the sprite went for Vadise, pulling out a flute and putting it to her lips.

Aura's golden energies spun into a spell-circle before lighting up the clearing, blinding Vadise long enough for Rei to get several good hits in. Her knives had been put away; the sprite was going into this part barehanded.

Nip had already been working on the dragon, and hung stubbornly onto Vadise's tail for all he was worth. It made for a wonderful distraction since the dragon had her attention split between Rei and the teeth currently latched onto the end of her tail.

Not using her knives made the fight last quite a bit longer, but eventually Vadise signaled that enough was enough, and curled panting on her natural throne. Rei immediately flopped down and went into stretches to keep her body from seizing up on her, while Nip picked a nice shady spot and took the opportunity for a nap.

_"As I thought,"_ Vadise commented after Sierra had woken and everyone had caught their breath. _"Your powers are excellent. I want you to…go after Larc."_

"My liege!" Sierra protested, once again back on her high perch.

The dragon tilted her slender head to look up at her dragoon. _"I will be alright, Sierra. You must save Larc and Rei."_

Rei growled but held her tongue. She _hardly_ needed saving, thank you! But if it got Sierra off her butt and self-pitying streak, then well and good. In the meantime… "Sierra. Think you can use that magic circle-thing of yours to transport us to the cemetery outside of Domina? Don't know about you, but I don't feel like spending a whole lot of time traveling."

————

After a few minutes' argument, Rei found herself popping into existence in a place she knew well. This was the outskirts of Domina, alright—but it was on the opposite side of the town where she'd wanted to pop up in. The trail leading up to Lake Kilma lay six feet behind her; Nip chittered angrily to see it.

"Yeah," Rei growled, scooping up the Rabite and taking off in a sprint. "I totally agree, furball."

She swung through town long enough to find Pelican and scribble a note out to her students to be taken back with Nip. It read simply, _'Gone to fight bad guy in Underworld. Will try to be back for supper. Love, Rei.'_ There was some part of her that was amused at the thought of how much that short note would drive her students up the wall, but most of her was too much in a hurry to be concerned with something like that.

Less than five minutes later she was running up to the big tombstone, having not even bothered to remove her cloak from her pack, and was about to smack the stone with her hand when Sierra stepped out of the stone. Taken by surprise, Rei yipped and pulled her hand back.

Sierra sheepishly told the knife-fighter that she couldn't get around the Underworld without getting lost, and that she was sorry for leaving Rei like that. "I just didn't want you to stay involved," she explained. "You've been through enough already."

Rei stuck out her tongue at the wolf-girl, grabbed her, and smacked the stone with her hand. "Try to ruin all my fun," muttered the sprite as disorientation swept over her. When it cleared, the two females were standing in the cave Rei had first found herself in—was it really over a month ago?—with Larc standing over her.

Confident, Rei took a step forward, only to have Sierra grab onto her shoulder to stop her. "I sense evil," growled the dragoon. Rei was about to make a scathing comment in which 'duh!' was featured, but didn't get a chance to before Drakonis' rich tones poured from the air.

_"Quite noble, Rei."_

"Noble, nothing!" Rei snapped at the ceiling. "I came here to push your bloody teeth in and make you keep your promise!" She'd spoken right over Sierra's gasp of Drakonis' name, though apparently not loudly enough to keep her from being noticed.

_"Dragoon…So you have come to retrieve your brother. How fraternal! This is just a token of my thanks. Take it."_

Out of nothing there formed a half-dozen spectral knights in heavy plate armor, in no way resembling the elegant creations of those belonging to Deathbringer. "Have at thee!" their leader yelled.

Sierra blew through them like they were nothing but air, the armored ghosts crumbling into a pile of rusty pieces of plate-mail that vanished within a heartbeat of hitting the ground. Rei blinked, whistled in appreciation, and asked, "So how come you didn't do that with_me_?"

"You didn't want to hurt me, either," replied her newest friend with a shy half-smile. "Now let's go save Larc!"

Rei clapped her on her shoulder, and they went.

————

It turned out that Rei didn't know the Underworld quite as well as she thought: she made one wrong turn that only cost them a few minutes' worth of backtracking. But after less than half an hour Rei led them both straight to the lowest floor of the Underworld. The two knife-fighters burst through the farthest door of the room where Rei and Larc had fought Hitodama, and came out onto the large stone platform that opened out onto the lake of flames.

"What is that!.?" Sierra demanded, looking out across the lake.

"That would be Drakonis' lair of doom," was Rei's tart reply, scanning the platform. She spotted a red-clad form kneeling across the way and bolted over, Sierra close on her heels. "Larc!"

_"At long last…after so many years, my wish is fulfilled!"_ sighed Drakonis' voice. He materialized only a few feet from them, gaze firmly on Larc. "You served me well, Larc."

"Lord Drakonis…" the dragoon intoned.

"I may now return to my original form…and flee this pathetic Underworld!" Drakonis laughed, triumph making the jewels he wore glow brighter.

"Not so fast, Drakonis! You'll have to get through us to see the surface!" Sierra yelled, drawing the male's attention to her. Rei merely stood her ground, letting the wolf-girl do the talking. "Larc!!"

"Sierra…"

"Drakonis is just using you! Can't you see it!.?"

Larc rose, nodding once. "I know. That's why I want you…to let me take him."

Sierra gasped, as Rei gave Larc an approving, fierce grin from behind the wolf-girl. "La…Larc?" the wolf-girl stammered in surprised. "You can't be…"

"I knew there was some pride in there I wasn't seeing," was Rei's contribution.

Larc spared a quick grin at the sprite before turning back to his master. "That's right, Drakonis! I collect Mana energy for you, and you amplify it. And when the time of return is at hand, you and I will fight, and only the victor shall rise again. That was our agreement. Fight me as we agreed!"

_I smell a trap,_ thought Rei.

Drakonis bowed his head for a moment in a gesture of respect that Rei doubted was real. "You are right, Larc. You are my dragoon, and my dearest partner. You served me well, so I shall fight you as I promised."

_Scratch that, I smell a double-cross._

And indeed, Rei proved correct, as Drakonis raised his arms and shouted, "But first, you shall have your reward!"

Larc doubled over, clouds of scarlet mist swirling around him. In the uneven light of the lake's glow, neither knife-fighter could be certain if the bloody mist was coming out of Larc or going in, but his cry of pain was unmistakable.

Sierra advanced on Drakonis, her blades out and trembling in her grasp. "Why you! What have you done to Larc!.?"

Drakonis gave her an evil little smile. "Why, just a little reward. Your brother always wanted to be a strong warrior, like his big sister…" Sierra's face twisted as that verbal jab slid home. "I merely granted him his wish." When Sierra yelled at him to stop, the dragon-man only laughed again, an oily sound that never failed to make Rei want to slug him, and pointed at the two females, commanding, "Now fight, Larc! Defeat your sister, and demonstrate your strength!"

"Larc!!" screamed the wolf-girl in anguish as dark magic swallowed her brother in a swirl of shadows. Rei took several large steps backwards, dragging her friend with her as the darkness spun out, revealing a mockery of a centaur, whose musculature by all rights should have made it impossible for Larc's new shape to even move.

"I owed you an ass-kicking for dragging me into this mess in the first place," murmured Rei to the beast, feeling sorrow begin to rise in her throat, "but I think in this case it will be kinder to bring you down before you do something you can't forgive yourself for."

The creature that was once her friend screeched what was probably a warcry, swinging at them with a halberd with far more speed than he should have had. In a brief flash of memory that would come later, Rei would see tears streaming down Sierra's face as the wolf-girl went into the fight knowing what she had to do. Rei sent a silent prayer to the Goddess and the sprite's patron elemental, Salamander, to guide her hand and make this quick.

With two experts of knives facing him, poor Larc had little chance to begin with. When they had every intention of taking him down before he did irreparable harm to one of them, he had no chance at all.

It took them only a minute or two to bring the centaur to his knees; a solid kick to the back of the neck sent him sliding down to the ground. Defeated, the spell enshrouding Larc broke and scattered, leaving the ruined body of the wolf-man laying on the floor of the terrace, whole sections of his armor gone.

Sierra dropped to her knees beside her brother, while Rei kept herself in the background knowing that her friend was too far gone for even her insta-heal potions to save. And she mourned him in silence as the fading Larc told his sister that the only reason he'd gone along with Drakonis at all was so that he could return to her, the one who was still in the land of the living. At the last moment, the wolf-man turned his head just a little to search out Rei, catching her gaze with his own and receiving the promise that Drakonis would pay, and dearly.

It was enough for Larc's spirit to disappear into nothing, though he did not go smiling.

Sierra leapt to her feet with a mournful, long howl. As though in response, the ground beneath their feet started shaking. The wolf-girl shouted over the sounds of grinding stone, "Drakonis! So this is how you will rise again!"

"He's gonna take the whole damned level with him!" Rei yelled to her, before a powerful wave of Mana energy knocked her off her feet and sent her flying. Sierra let out a shout of dismay before she, too, was sent tumbling back towards the way they'd come.

———

When Rei awoke, she found herself lying on rough stone floor, dark sky open above her. She groaned, levering herself up onto one elbow. "So this is Drakonis' fortress?" she heard from her left. The knife-fighter looked over to find Sierra standing at the edge of a stone drop-off, gazing over a deep pit to an impressive building in the middle of the abyss. "I thought it was destroyed."

"Nah," Rei moaned, rising and dusting herself off. "'S far as I can tell, it just got buried. You okay?"

"Yes. And you?"

"Bruised," the blonde admitted ruefully. "I wasn't expecting that blast of energy he used to send us head over heels."

_"I am glad everyone is alright,"_ Vadise said, a translucent image of her appearing by a sturdy wooden bridge that led from cliff edge to castle.

"Vadise!" cried Sierra in relief.

"What kind of magic is that?" Rei asked of the dragon. "It feels…odd."

_"This is my spirit form,"_ explained Vadise. _"My soul is with you."_

Sierra's ears lifted from her violet mane. "You have been protecting us?"

_"Indeed."_

The white dragon's soldier drooped, and she dropped to one knee in shame. "Vadise…I have failed…" she whispered to her master. "I couldn't save Larc."

"_We_ couldn't save him," Rei corrected gently.

Sierra leaped to her feet. "But mark my words! I will stop Drakonis!"

A hand landed on her shoulder; the wolf-girl turned to find Rei standing just behind her with a chiding grin pulling at coral-pink lips. "Oi. What's with all this 'I' stuff? You aren't trying to keep all the fun to yourself again, are you?"

_"There is a powerful barrier here," _warned Vadise, regaining the pair's attention. _"Once you enter, you may not be able to return."_

"And what's life without a little excitement?" Rei slung back over Sierra's protests. The sprite was willing to swear that she saw the dragon smile for a heartbeat.

_"You must not face Drakonis alone, Sierra, lest you be made into his servant as was Larc."_

"Larc was his servant?" Sierra gasped in dismay.

Rei lifted her hand. "Question: the difference between a servant and a dragoon is?"

"A dragoon is…is…" Sierra groped for the words she needed. "A partner, a friend, a companion. A servant is just someone to do your bidding."

_"Drakonis' weakness lies in his solitude,"_ confirmed Vadise. _"He believes no one, he befriends no one."_

"Then what should I…?" Sierra implored, trailing off to look back at the knife-fighter now standing a step away from the bridge.

_"All life is connected by ties that bind us together. That is your answer. The bonds of life bring caring and support, and will be of much help to you. Do you remember those words, Rei?"_

" 'The world will suffer if we don't stop Drakonis'," Rei quoted dryly, eyeing the planks of wood that formed her path to the fortress. "I remember, Vadise."

_"He desires to subjugate all life in this world. Even the aloof dragons seek bonds with other life through their dragoons. Such is the truth of life, and the absolute law of the world."_ Vadise arched her neck, pinning both fighters with her gaze. _"Sierra, Rei. I entrust you with saving the bonds of life. Put a stop to Drakonis."_

"Let us fight together, Rei," Sierra said softly.

The sprite twisted to look over her shoulder, favoring both with a feral, gleeful smile. Her blood was already singing with the oncoming battle—it always did, when her family went to war against those who would pervert the world the Goddess had created. "Of course, Sierra. Now come on." Her foot came to rest upon the first plank and the sprite's weight shifted until it was fully supported by that foot.

The plank held, though the air rang with Rei's cry as she took off across the bridge. "I'll race you to the gate!"

Feeling her own blood racing faster, Sierra gave her master one last hopeful look before she followed after her friend.

———

Two hours later, Rei's fervor had cooled into frustration. Getting into Drakonis' fortress had been simple since he'd left the front doors unlocked. The hard part was actually finding the way through the damned place. Every path that led farther into the castle had a short hallway with a floor that was pressure sensitive. It would wait until you were halfway across and then drop you back to the floor below, or even the basement.

Rei groaned as the two knife-fighters climbed to the fourth floor, picking their way around monsters and stairs, thankful that at least one didn't have to fall twenty feet or more just to find a staircase. "All right. This is the only floor we haven't fallen through yet. Let's hope this works."

Another hour later, Rei and Sierra finally climbed the last set of stairs that led to the center of the castle. The drop-plate in the fourth-floor hallway had led to a room with a guardian monster, whose defeat had caused a colored globe to dim. That in turn had opened up more places, until Sierra and Rei had destroyed three globes in total.

That was enough to let them get to the heart of the citadel, it seemed.

Rei breathlessly followed the female dragoon through a massive set of doors that led out onto a balcony-like room, half-open to the skies and draped everywhere with rich fabrics. And felt her battle-fire relighting at the sight of Drakonis standing by the balcony's edge.

And the first thing out of her mouth as she leaned against the wall, glaring at the dragon, was, "Your castle sucks, you egomaniacal bastard."

"Glad you enjoyed it," he replied, mocking. His gaze wandered over to Sierra, one thin, dark eyebrow rising at the sight of her. "A dragoon, hm?"

"I am the dragoon Sierra!" the wolf-girl cried, stepping forward. "By order of my master, I have come to stop you!"

Rei face-palmed. "And the clichéd lines run in the family. New script, must have."

Drakonis ignored her, his attention on the furious Sierra. "And do you oppose me as much as your master does?" he inquired softly, smile never ceasing to deride. "How noble! Come hither…"

"Born to protect order," Sierra growled, making a sharp cutting gesture with one hand, "you deny the bonds of life! You are truly despicable!"

"Your brother is mine," Drakonis told her with a shrug. "Both brother and sister shall soon become my nourishment."

"You_ate_ Larc??" Rei was off the wall and advancing on Drakonis with her knives unsheathed, falling into place beside Sierra. "Even for you, that's sick."

"All the souls you have swallowed…" They walked forward in step, the dragoon's voice echoing off the walls. "Return to me Jajara, Akravator, and my brother, Larc! Prepare to die, Drakonis!"

"Because, really," finished Rei, "you don't have time to do anything else."

Drakonis flung his arms up in a gesture unmistakable for anything other than a spell trigger, as he and the two females were swept into another place altogether.

Rei swore as her feet found purchase on empty space, sinister crimson clouds swirling above and below. Beside her, Sierra breathed an oath at the sight in front of them. And then both had to scramble to the sides when a massive red dragon slammed into a landing where they'd stood. _"Become my sustenance!"_ Drakonis roared, his voice no longer smooth and oily, but full of the crackling of flames.

Rei shouted for him to do something anatomically impossible—especially for his current form—and cupped her hands for Sierra to step into. The sprite woman's strength boosted the wolf-girl a good twenty feet into the air, high enough for Sierra to land on the dragon's back and start carving away with her knives.

Her partner went low, ducking under the snapping teeth of a screaming Drakonis and sinking golden blades into the scaled belly. Special technique after special technique was used, from Rei's favorite Pouncing Cat to Dance of Roses to ones that Rei hadn't even come up with a name for. Mana surged into fantastic shapes, wounding the red dragon deeply each time.

Not that the two had it easy. Sierra and Rei were constantly dodging clawed feet, razor-sharp teeth, and the dragon's whipping tail. Drakonis kept sending vicious spells chasing after them as well, and both knife-fighters were bloody and bruised by the time their enemy let out a death-cry. Before their eyes he dwindled into nothing, vanishing from sight.

In a swirl of disorientation, the sprite and the wolf-girl found themselves back in Drakonis' castle, Larc an unconscious form at their feet and still grievously wounded.

"Larc!" Sierra shouted, rushing forward. Rei shouldered her aside at the last second, wrapping the bleeding dragoon in her winter cloak and hefting him onto her shoulder.

"The castle's collapsing!" Rei yelled over the rumble of falling masonry. "Sierra, get us out of here!"

Vadise's partner rested a hand on Rei's free shoulder and sent Mana out into the patterns of the teleport spell. They disappeared from the tower just as pieces of the ceiling and wall crashed down.

———

Winter sunlight shone down on the scene before the ancient gravestone. Vadise in her spirit form sat to one side, with Larc laid out on the snow-brushed grass, still wrapped up in Rei's winter cloak. Rei was restraining Sierra from going near her brother only by serious effort.

"Let me go, Rei!" demanded the wolf-girl, doubling her fight to get loose. "Larc!"

_"Do not touch him!"_ Vadise commanded her dragoon, who fell still in Rei's grasp with a heartbroken query of 'why?'.

Larc was the one who answered her, slowly getting to his feet despite his wounds. "It's the curse of Drakonis' blood. For a thousand years from now, I will be trapped in the Underworld with Drakonis."

Vadise's graceful head dipped into a nod. _"If you touch him, you too will be cursed, and will not be able to stay away from the Underworld."_

"How terrible," murmured Sierra, watching her brother with yearning clear in her eyes. "Larc…"

"Such is the law of dragoons. It is my burden to bear, Sierra, not yours." Larc aborted the touch he was extending to her, instead he wrapped the cloak around him more tightly.

"I won't let you bear it alone!" Rei tightened her grip to make sure that Sierra wouldn't do something martyr-like, like going to her brother anyway.

Larc gave Rei a grateful nod, then told his sister, "No, Sierra. It's my sin. I need to atone for it." He gave her a weak smile. "I don't need a thousand years to break the dragon's curse. And I'm used to the Underworld. So, please," the wolf-man begged, "you must return to the forest!"

"You haven't changed," Sierra told him sadly, patting Rei's hand to let her know that it was safe to release her. "You would always make me worry, but never acknowledge it." The two stood for a moment, looking at each other with such pain that it nearly broke Rei's heart. Sierra suddenly gave her brother a bright smile, tail moving slightly. "It's okay, Larc. I'll go see you next time."

"Sierra…"

————

_And then, after that…the Guardians of Order, the blue dragon and the bone dragon, resumed their places. And the Mana energy that had been stolen was returned to the world. Few know of the brother and sister torn apart by constant warfare…and who were finally reunited._

Rei shut the book she'd been writing in, leaning back in her chair to move into a stretch. It's been a little over a month since Drakonis' defeat, and Rei had spent a good five days of it just resting and recovering—as well as reassuring her apprentices that she wasn't going to be fighting any more egomaniacal, power-hungry would-be Emperors any time soon.

She rubbed at her eyes, thinking back. Four days ago she'd gotten home from visiting Sierra at Vadise's lair in the White Forest. It had been worth the week she'd spent camped out in Olbohn's office to see the overjoyed expression on Sierra's face when Larc had come walking into Vadise's clearing. Of course, all of that was only possible thanks to the teleport spell she'd picked up after watching Sierra use it so many times. Rei liked traveling, sure, but she didn't want to leave her apprentices alone that long unless she had to.

After Rei had gotten home from visiting her dragoon friends, she'd sat down and had begun chronicling what had happened, from Larc dragging her down into the Underworld to the smack-down she and Sierra had given Drakonis. It was part of her task as a Venstry and a tale-collector to make sure that it was all written down as accurately as she could remember and as impartially as she could manage.

It just wasn't very often that a Venstry would find himself—or herself, in this case—front and center of the whole thing.

The knife-fighter sighed her way into another luxurious stretch before she started massaging her writing hand to work the cramps out. Part of the time she'd spent with Larc and Sierra had been to get their side of the story; both their versions lay in the front half of the book, all of it written in Rei's neat script.

"Master Rei?" Lisa poked her head into the study. Her teacher looked over at her in surprise, startlement written clear in green eyes when Rei noticed at last that dawn was peering through her window. "Have you even been to bed yet?"

The elf girl was given a sheepish smile. "No. I don't even remember lighting the candles."

Lisa let out an exasperated sigh. "Get some sleep, Master Rei. You wanted to take Mark some metalwork today, remember? You can't do that if you fall on your nose halfway there."

Rei threw a cork from an empty ink-bottle at her student, a wry smile pulling at her lips. "Who's the teacher, here? I can go a couple of days without sleep and it won't kill me." A huge yawn popped her jaw, sliding back into a smile as Rei admitted, "I just don't want to. Wake me up around noonish, all right?"

"Okay. I won't bother saving breakfast for you, just lunch." Lisa disappeared into the kitchen while Rei ambled upstairs to fall into bed. Bud passed her on his way down, bleary-eyed and obviously planning to go right back to bed after a quick visit to the bathroom. Try as he might, Rei's second apprentice just could not keep awake in the early hours despite putting in over six months' of effort. So unless he had kitchen duty—he'd finally won permission to use the kitchen alone now that he'd stopped mixing up potions with food—Bud generally stayed asleep until around ten in the morning.

Rei felt a smile pull at her, a contented, happy little thing that told her that all was well and good. The knife-fighter fell asleep wearing it, and never heard Bud when he came back up and disappeared into his room.

Lil' Cactus hummed softly in his pot, and waited for his master to find a new story to tell him.

———

Later that afternoon, Rei was ambling up to the front gate and enjoying the early spring sunshine when she heard, of all things, the voice of Lil' Cactus not ten feet away. Mindful of the slushy mud that was all that was left of the winter's snows, Rei vaulted her gate and found not one, but _four_ Sproutlings gathered on her front walk with her pet spine-ball.

Well, three Sproutlings and Lil' Cactus were gathered around. The fourth, somehow recognizable as _her_ Sproutling, was a limp heap on the ground and looked rather dazed. "Is he okay?" asked Lil' Cactus in real concern. "Is he dying?"

"Don't worry," one of the other Sproutlings replied cheerfully, "he was only chosen. Now he's going to the spiritual world to become a part of a big tree."

_Find me, and walk beside me._

Rei found herself reeling as a dream she'd forgotten came flooding back into her mind, until it seemed that a woman stood just behind her, speaking right into her ear. Balance slipping, the knife-fighter clutched at the gate and shook her head to clear it.

"A big tree?" her pet was asking, sounding curious now.

Another of the standing Sproutlings nodded. "Yep, we plants are all connected at our roots."

"We may look like separate beings," said the third—or was it the first?—to Lil' Cactus, "but we are one plant in our real dimension."

Her pet's face was alight in wonder. "You're one plant?"

Smiled the first, "We belong to one tree."

"What about me?"

The Sproutlings skipped a little in place, happily chirping, "You, too!"

Lil' Cactus thought about that for a moment, then beamed. "I didn't know that!"

"If the plants join the big tree in the spiritual dimension," Sproutling number two told him solemnly, "that big tree will revive in this world, too."

"OH!"

_Nine centuries ago, the Mana Tree burned to ashes…_ Rei gave up on keeping her balance and sat down on her mercifully-dry walk, staring at the Sproutlings so cheerfully gathered in front of her. Lil' Cactus noticed her at last, squeaked a hello to her, and then scampered back into the house before the still-nippy weather could damage him.

The knife-fighter groped for a question, any question, in the muddle that had swarmed up on the heels of her memories, and could only come up with one. "Why are you here?"

One of the Sproutlings turned to her, and with a smile that was somehow innocent and ancient all at once, it told her gently, "We're here only because we like staying here."

Now thoroughly confused and weirded out, Rei gave the quartet a wide berth in reaching the front door. Going inside, she called for her students, but received no response. Growing anxious, she called louder and heard a faint hail from outside. So she went back out to the front porch…only to find _her_ Sproutling gone and the rest chattering disjointed things that boiled down to "I'm lost!"

"Bud? Lisa?"

"Corral!" came the doubled call.

"'Kay!" Rei blinked: there were Sproutling leaves scattered along the path leading to her workshop. That didn't bode well. Naturally, curiosity and a reluctance to leave trouble alone on her doorstep sent her following that trail of fallen leaves right into her workshops.

There she found a large, round stained-glass window with the face of a man and a little female sprite in pretty blue witch's robes arguing hotly in the main room. The little witch was in tears as she shouted, "Bring back the Sproutling you hid!.! He was supposed to rise to the spiritual world to become the Mana Tree!"

"I cannot do that," said the glass circle with remarkable calm. "We have no use for the Mana Tree."

Rei was noticed a split second later, the weeping sprite—who was floating a good foot off the ground—coming over to her and begging, "Oh, please help me! This man trapped a Sproutling in a dream with dimensional magic! Now the Sproutling won't be able to become the Mana Tree!"

The knife fighter blinked at the tiny woman. "My Sproutling? Become the Mana Tree?"

Across the room, the man remarked irritably, "Sproutlings should remain as they are, and they shouldn't become the Mana Tree. I have lived long enough to see many catastrophic events occur over the Tree's power. Has mankind ever used the Tree's power for a noble cause? Not once. We must eliminate the sources of quarrels. Peace is what we need."

Rei was beginning to get an idea of who the man was. There was only one person currently known to exist who was old enough to have seen the Mana Tree burn—and was stuck inside one of his own summoning circles. On basis of this alone, she was inclined to dislike him, and not only because he was trying to deny a force of good being brought back into the world.

After all, he'd contributed to getting her apprentices getting tossed out on their rumps.

Wanting to get confirmation, Rei told the little witch to wait a moment and went outside, nearly running into the lanky form of Pokiehl, the blue-feathered, bright-eyed, melodic philosopher of the Widsoms. After she hastily apologized, Pokiehl merely patted her on the shoulder and told her that he was going inside to have a chat with Nunuzac now, and would she like to join them?

The identity of the man within her workshop confirmed, Rei immediately agreed and followed Pokiehl back inside.

"Hello, Nunuzac," the Wisdom bard greeted with perfect serenity. "It's been a long time, hasn't it?"

Rei could have sworn she'd heard her students' ex-teacher gulp. "Sir Pokiehl!!"

What followed was a verbal sparring match worth any of those she or Xan had ever gotten into. Pokiehl stood calmly next to her by the door, and told the sorcerer, "The time has come for the Sproutling. Let him go."

Nunuzac retorted, "Do the Wisdoms prefer war over peace, Sir Pokiehl? You must be aware that blood will be shed over a revived Mana Tree! We have proven that we can live without the Tree's powers. Even if it the Wisdoms' choice, I will not obey!"

"The Mana Tree may not be a necessity," Pokiehl answered, "but it brings blessings to our lives. Likewise, love may not be a necessity, but even you know its blessings…Do you see what I am saying, Nunuzac?"

_I am love. Find me, and walk beside me…_ Rei firmly pushed the dream fragments away, too interested in what was unfolding before her to be distracted.

"But some will harm and take the possessions of others to feel that bliss. I believe tranquility of the soul is not to desire anything. We will be better off without the Mana Tree in our lives."

_Mankind became afraid to desire, and grew estranged from my hands. _Rei actually made a small pushing gesture to silence the dream-fragments, and got a sideways glance from Pokiehl for her effort. The Wisdom only gave her a smile; she had a feeling he had an idea of what she was remembering, and replied to the sorcerer, "Nunuzac, the world you see is only a part of a vast universe. The Mana Tree is the source of unlimited power, yes, but…what it really does is remind us that the power is found within. It's not the materialistic wealth missing from our lives, it's love."

Nunuzac's image rippled in a rough approximation of a blink. "Love?"

"Love is power. Give it to another, and you will bring bliss. Criminals, friends, strangers, and even yourself…All is reborn when you forgive, love, and understand."

Rei watched in fascination as the entire window-shape rolled in a wave motion. "The Wisdoms sure do seem to be masters of trickery with words!" scorned the man, making Rei blink again. Trickery? Pokiehl was being shockingly frank for once. That, or…

The Wisdom glanced over again at the disgusted squeak that Rei wasn't quite able to flatten, giving her a curious tilt to his head. She shook hers, indicating that he should continue sparring with his 'opponent'. He obliged. "Nunuzac, you believe that fools outnumber the wise. You seem to think that you are fighting the fools in a war. You are fighting against the pessimistic world that only exists in your head. None of the creatures the Goddess created are truly fools. All you need to do is believe it."

"Reality is not the dream you are preaching," Nunuzac said, voice sounding mournful. "Villains like the Deathbringer will surely come for the Mana Tree. Then I would have to teach my pupils about true conjuration. The world would return to the age of darkness."

Pokiehl shook his head. "What you describe is a thing of the past. Do not waste your life away doubting all you see, Nunuzac. How can you think the Goddess created this world only for suffering?"

Now the sorcerer sounding like he was pouting. "Our very essence, not our behavior, is foolish."

"If that is what you believe, then that is how it shall be." And the Wisdom turned as though to leave.

The glass circle shivered. "Sir Pokiehl!.!" When the bard turned back, Nunuzac told him humbly, "I am but an old timer…Please, lead me through this world with your supreme power and wisdom!!"

The bird-man gave the sorcerer a gentle smile. "I'll trust you to do whatever you believe in. Even if you decide to destroy the world, I shall pray for you." Then he left, Nunuzac's protest this time going unheeded.

"For what do the world and our lives exist?" asked Nunuzac of the empty air in front of him.

Rei walked over. "They exist so we can live," she told the summoner as gently as she could. "How else could we learn?"

The face in the glass seemed to focus on her for a moment, _through_ her, and Rei suddenly found herself in a grayed version of the Mekiv caverns. Only, they were out of order, and the monsters within them weren't in the usual pattern, either. Or even as easy as normal.

Rei passed through five or six caves like them, and came to a dead-end in the last cavern, to find her missing Sproutling lying in a vibrant green heap on the gray floor. When she carefully shook him, he roused, leaping to his feet all at once. "Huh?" he piped, looking around in confusion. "Where am I? I have to go heal the Mana Tree! It's our job to focus the light of love on the Mana Tree's wounds."

The light around them dimmed until Rei couldn't have seen the end of her nose if she tried. And out of that darkness came that familiar, dizzying woman's voice. _Rei…Take this sword, close your eyes, and imagine…_

The knife-fighter automatically obeyed, feeling something heavy and somehow scintillating even against her fingertips land in her outstretched hands. She cradled the long shape close, breathed in slow, and let her normal thoughts of a life filled with people and adventure flow from her into the air around her.

Several long heartbeats passed before the lights rose to their previous brightness. Rei found a sword more delicate than she could ever have made held close to her body, a crystalline blade attached to a golden hilt with feathery wings serving as the cross-guards. Two circles of gold looped around the lower half of the blade, defying gravity without even trying.

Her Sproutling let out a startled squeak, making Rei look up from the treasure in her arms to find that the little creature now had a sapling emerging from the top of his head. Fragile pink blossoms turned the crown of the sapling into a froth of petals…

And suddenly Rei found herself back in front of her workshop where Pokiehl had apparently been waiting. A heartbeat after her feet found purchase in the dirt, the sword in her arms broke apart into thousands of glowing motes that scattered outward on the rising notes of an unearthly melody. For a moment the whole of Rei's world was that melody, smaller harmonies weaving themselves around the song until the knife-fighter thought she'd die or go mad from the beauty of it.

Pokiehl's hand on her arm brought her back down to reality with a near-physical shock, green eyes blinking rapidly to clear the tears away. "It's dangerous to listen to the song of the world too long without preparation," he remarked, voice soft. Rei could only nod. "Now, what was that sound you made for when I was chatting with Nunuzac?"

Rei offered him a shakier version of her wickedest smile. "Oh. I think I'm spending too much time around you and Larc, is all. Normally you're confusing as hell, but this time I was keeping up with no problem."

"I see." The Wisdom chuckled and began walking down the path—to where, Rei didn't bother to guess. "Then I shall see you later, Rei. Enjoy the rest of your day."

"Pokiehl?"

He turned back, tilting his head once again. "Yes?"

Rei ducked her head. "I have two questions, before you go. If I may."

"Of course," Pokiehl told her, giving her a smile. "Ask away."

"Why was my Sproutling chosen to become the new Mana Tree? And…whose dream did Nunuzac cage him in?"

One feathery finger came to rest alongside the short, straight yellow beak, accompanied by a wink. "You would know the answer to the first if you'd asked the other Sproutlings. It was because the Mana Tree needs love, is love, and your Sproutling was given much of it by you. As for your second question…" The smile he gave her was positively mischievous. "She has been in your dreams, Rei. Where better to hide the little fellow but in Hers?"

With that, the Wisdom vanished, leaving Rei to stare at where he'd been standing just moments before. She gazed at nothing for a few moments, her entire being still vibrating from that ethereal music like her body had been a struck tuning fork, before shaking her head to make her hair-pipes chime.

"Right. Note to self: do not ask Pokiehl any more questions unless I really,_really_ want the answer."

Needing something normal, Rei went to help her students with their pet monsters. She'd have quite a story to tell Lil' Cactus tonight.

————


	18. Gilbert: Love is Blind

Okay! I'm back from Portland—I had to go on for a conference, and _damn_, it was _cold_!—my car broke down in Bodega Bay (for those of you who don't live in the North Bay of California or anywhere near Sonoma County, that's a good hour's drive from almost anywhere else)—and I was saved by DragonSeer and her AAA card of goodness. Still had to shell out a hefty chunk of change to have a new starter put in. _—grumbles—_ Interesting month, and it's only halfway there. So!

**Tiamat42:** o.O Woow, that's a long rant. Um, let me see if I can't just hit the bullet points… 1) I thought the Sproutlings were cute, if a little annoying. But the male Flowerlings were definitely put together weird. 2) I really don't get the testing thing either. Pointless, very much. 3) Glad the ending scene for the Dragon Arc made you happy, though I must admit that the whole back-and-forth between Nunuzac and Pokiehl was lifted entirely from the game. 4) The Mana Sword was introduced simply because of the timing in the game. Rei still has no idea that the Tree is currently parked in the 'real world', nor will she be finding out about it until quite a bit later. 5) Elazul is currently going poof. You're going to hit me later, I just know it. 6) No kidding.

**YamiGoddess:** The writers do like making our lives hard, don't they? But when you're at high levels and you have nifty weapons, those land dragons go down hard. I should just make this story entirely Elazul, shouldn't I?

**Starlight's Delight:** Oh, yeah. Rei's shoulder-deep and sinking, fast. That little note to her students was one of my favorite parts. I giggled maniacally for about five minutes straight when I thought of it.

**Vrtrahex:** Welcome back! I missed you! The sentiment on the Jumi Arc is shared wholeheartedly by DragonSeer, whom I have corrupted thoroughly with Mana. She wants a Lil' Cactus as a familiar, now, in any RPG she can get the Story Teller to agree to.

**Meeerf:** Ooh, a new reviewer! I had worried about that, actually. It's mostly a case of 'I want people to really see what I'm looking at'. I'll try to tone it down in the future. I won't be writing out _all_ of the adventures, but my favorite side-quests will still get the limelight along with the major story events. Everything else will at least get a brief mention. And I'm having a bit too much fun with Rei's background history, oh, yes.

As for Drakonis' castle-'o-doom, I only got frustrated with it the last time I played through. I originally had one of those really nice company-printed walkthroughs with the maps and everything, which I used to get those pesky minor events that don't happen unless you really work at it. However, the copy of the game that I first had kept glitching, so I forgot how to navigate the darn thing. I spent, oh, it must have been a good hour, real time, working my way through the various pitfalls of the castle. There was much grr-ing and argh-ing.

Current vote score on Drakonis' Castle: 5 against, 1 for.

Language note: For the extended notes in Elle's singing, long hyphens have been used. Because I'm weird that way.

————

Rei flopped down into her chair in front of the fireplace with a tired, irritated groan, kicking off her shoes and propping her feet up on the warm hearth. "A curse on all centaurs that think they're good minstrels," she told no one in particular. She still smelled like sea-water from today's adventure that hadn't even started out as an adventure. All she'd gone to do was visit Elle over at Madora…

——

Rei gave the pretty siren a smile that told Elle just how pleased the knife-fighter was to see her as Rei climbed the last stair. Walking over to the little pond that Elle sat over on her swing, Rei greeted her with, "I hope you're having a good morning, Elle. It's a beautiful day outside."

And it was. Spring was really getting rolling now, just a couple of weeks after winter had officially ended. The air was crisp and smelled of new growth around her home and in Domina; along the beach it carried the smell of fresh salt and seaweed. The sun made the air just the perfect temperature, not too hot and not too cold. Even the breezes were frisky, frolicking amid the waves and teasing the tops of whitecaps into thin strands of crystal drops.

Rei had gotten a very bad case of itchy feet because of it, and after she'd helped out some of the townsfolk in planting some of the northern fields with this year's grain crop she'd decided to take a brief trip to visit some of her closer friends. Bud and Lisa were still worried that she'd end up fighting something bigger than normal if she went somewhere new, so Rei'd sworn that she wouldn't go any farther than a day away from home.

Since that limited her choices—Elazul and Pearl hadn't visited Domina lately, though Rei had been getting a few scattered letters from them, so they were still safe—and most everyone she knew lived more than a day away, she'd figured that Elle could use some company.

And it looked like she'd been right. The siren returned Rei's smile, if more hesitantly, and ventured a shy, "I _was_ thinking about going outside…May I come with you?"

"Sure." Rei's reply was quick. "Where do you want to go? My apprentices are keeping me on a short leash, so Polpota's as far as I can go."

Elle brightened visibly. "Oh, that would be lovely. I could visit Flameshe for a change, instead of the other way around."

Rei agreed that this would be a pleasant thing indeed, and off the two went. The knife-fighter playfully challenged the Siren into a race down the beach; it wasn't more than an hour's travel to Polpota if one went west. Less, if you had the stamina and speed that Rei and Xan had trained for years for. Shyly, Elle said yes—and Rei learned just how fast a Siren with wings could fly.

If she hadn't been saving her breath for a full-out sprint, Rei would have whooped her pleasure at their speed. Fat sprays of sand were kicked up by her feet as she raced along the water-line, the wet grains smacking back to the ground with a satisfying plop. The merry breeze blew mist-kisses at her from the tops of the low rolling waves.

And always just a few feet ahead was Elle, laughter bubbling up from the Siren at the sight of her friend running with total abandon, head up and eyes sparkling.

They blew into Polpota like that, Elle smiling and happy and Rei too breathless to giggle as she plopped against a marketplace wall to rest. "I….will not…concede…defeat!" panted the sprite, grinning up at Elle, cheeks pink and hair wind-tossed.

"I never imagined you would," giggled Elle truthfully. "Best two out of three?"

Rei pretended to seriously consider it, then flopped onto the warm stone. "Maybe…after I…stop…bein' dead," she replied.

That had won the sprite outright laughter from Elle, the pretty singer waiting until Rei had caught her breath to go exploring. Flameshe was nowhere in town, sadly, which put a hefty crimp in the plan to surprise her, but much to Rei's irritation that idiot centaur Gilbert _hadn't_ pulled stakes yet. He was still at the Sea's Bounty restaurant and grill, singing syrupy water-themed ballads rather badly off-key. Rei couldn't for the life of her figure out why the few penguins still taking shore leave seemed to be enjoying the performance. Maybe it was the stuff they were drinking? She got a whiff of a tankard's contents on the heels of that thought and made a face.

Yep. Definitely the grog.

The poor music stopped with a discordant twang of strings, Gilbert staring, white-faced, at the pretty female standing just behind Rei. _"Monique?!"_ came his stunned gasp. Rei rather thought he looked like someone had shoved a sword into his gut.

Oblivious to the reaction she'd caused, Elle merely tilted her head a little to one side and told the centaur, "My name is Elle. Monique is my friend, but who are you?"

The knife-fighter had to give Gilbert points for the fastest recovery of aplomb she'd ever seen. The lute was slung onto his back as he dipped the human half of his body into an elegant bow. "Oh, how could I have mistaken you for anyone I know?" he cried, coming over and nudging Rei aside so that he could more easily kiss the back of Elle's hand. "I'm Gilbert, a poet of LOVE!"

"There you go with that nonsense again," Rei sighed, going around to Elle's other side. She didn't trust the idiot half as far as she could throw him, when it came to anything even close to romance.

He ignored her, instead gazing fervently up into Elle's face. "Those deep-set eyes of yours, those lush lips…" he purred, "You must be my passionate messenger of love, baby!"

Rescuing her hand, Elle edged back a little to regain her personal space. "Um…I don't think so."

Gilbert straightened, confidence in his smile. "Oh, but that's how it starts, my love. You will eventually begin to feel the burning passion! Just you wait, darling, and you will become mesmerized by my love."

Looking quite uncomfortable now, Elle bade him and Rei a hasty goodbye and fled. Gilbert slung his lute back to the front and began crooning what was likely supposed to be a song, but only sounded like meaningless drabble to Rei.

Mind you, she'd be the first to admit that she was no hand at writing lyrics, but even she knew that 'ocean of love' was clichéd, corny, and just plain overdone.

Growling a little in irritation, she snapped at him. "What do you think you're doing, idiot?"

"I'm making a theme song for Elle and myself!" he replied happily. "I'll deliver it to you when it's finished! The wind knows the way! Oh, I was born to feel this throbbing in my heart!"

"I'd say it's more you being touched in the head," retorted the grumpy sprite. "What'd you go and have to do that for, anyway? It's really _hard_ to get Elle to come out of that dratted hidey-hole of hers, and you went and scared her right back into it."

But Gilbert was happily absorbed in his writing and didn't hear a word of Rei's complaint. Muttering plenty of uncomplimentary things under her breath, the sprite sent what little magic she had into the pattern for the one and only teleport spell she knew.

Goddess forbid she end up running that damned beach more than once today, and she'd have to run it if she wanted to see Elle again before she had to go home.

———

Flameshe had beaten Rei to the flower-covered lighthouse, the sprite found when she walked up the stairs. The mermaid was sitting in her usual place on a root next to the pond, and sounded just as grumpy as always. "Have you decided to stop singing outside?" she was asking when Rei came in.

Seated on her swing-perch, Elle nodded. "Yes. I don't want to sink any more ships."

"Let them sink!" Flameshe growled, tossing her head. "Humans should swim or fly, like we do. Why are they acting like they own the rights to the sea? Present company excluded, of course," she added in a less-heated tone to the sprite now taking a seat on the edge of the pond. "We were the first ones here, and we're being punished for that! It's so ridiculous!"

"I know, Flameshe," said Elle quietly.

"This only started when humans began to use ships!" added Flameshe, tail lashing in her temper.

"……I know."

"Oh, you always say 'I know,' no matter what I say!" the mermaid scolded. Rei had to hide a tiny smile of amusement, since Flameshe's temper reminded her of Bud in one of his moods.

"I'm sorry," whispered Elle to the water under her feet.

Flameshe took a deep breath and wrestled her anger back under wraps. "Don't apologize! It's who you are!"

Whatever argument had been about to begin or had just died was thoroughly forgotten when a male baritone poured into their ears—and for once, it sounded properly in tune. "Ah! The emerald sea!" sang Gilbert's voice from somewhere outside, making Rei and Elle blink at each other in astonishment. "Oh, how the gentle undulation of the waves calms my soul! I shall drown myself in the sea of your love! Oh, Zephyr! Carry the birdsong to my heart!"

Elle half-turned, looking at the wall behind her as though she could see right through it. "Gilbert?"

"What the heck is that?" demanded Flameshe of no one in particular.

"That's Gilbert, Monique's ex-boyfriend," Elle told her absently, still staring at the wall. "Wow, he really came."

"Now how do we get him to leave?" was Rei's muttered query as she crossed her arms. Gilbert was about as low as he could get on her list of people she wanted to see.

Flameshe wrinkled her nose in agreement. "It doesn't seem to matter whether you sing or not," she commented to her friend. "You're a magnet for weird things and people. Present company included. I bet your singing had nothing to do with the shipwreck."

Rei burst into laughter at that, her irritation evaporating as she got to her feet and beckoned to the shy bird-woman just a few feet away. "I'd have to agree! Now come on, we're missing a beautiful day outside!"

Gilbert was standing on the beach beyond the ramp to the entrance when Rei and Elle came out into the sunlight. He turned at the sound of their feet in the sand and his eyes lit up at the sight of the pretty singer. "Elle! You came!"

Elle half-ducked behind an amused Rei, hesitantly saying, "Well, um…I didn't come out to see you…"

The centaur gave her a reassuring smile and walked towards them a few steps. "That's alright, Elle! What you're feeling is pre-love symptoms!"

That made the two women share a glance with each other. "No," replied Elle, "I don't think that's what it is, either."

Flameshe popped into being on the sands at the bottom of the ramp, tail-fin curled to her hips as she told her friend pertly, "Just tell him! Tell him that you hate him!"

"Oh!" cried Gilbert, "a mermaid girl! You are as beautiful as Elle!" He added eagerly, "If I had a clone of myself, he would be in love with you! Ah, but Elle is the only one for me now, baby!" Rei had to give him a few grudging brownie points for that. The idiot was obviously in love with love for its' own sake, but at least he was a dedicated, loyal idiot, for whatever that was worth.

Flameshe wasn't having any of it, though. She made a noise of disdain and told Elle, "This guy's weird! Elle, I won't be your friend if you go out with him!"

"Oh, Flameshe! That's not a nice thing to say!" Elle chided. "I mean, Monique was his girlfriend!" The mermaid made a disgusted sound in Gilbert's direction, then disappeared via her bubble-spell once more. Their unwelcome guest thanked Elle for her kindness, trotting over until he'd firmly displaced Rei from the bird-woman's side.

As one who was declaiming a great ballad, Gilbert gestured out at the ocean beyond the lighthouse. "Look at the horizon. Can you see the ship over there?"

Backing up to regain her personal space, Elle looked out over the water. "A ship?" she repeated nervously. "No, I don't see it."

"That ship is us, baby. So small, compared to this vast sea…" His brief foray into metaphor allowed Rei a chance to edge into a spot where _she_ could check the horizon and pursed her lips into a silent whistle. There was a ship there, all right, at the very edge of her vision…and the black speck shivering at the tip of the main-mast couldn't have been anything but a pirate's Jolly Roger.

"Centaur's got good eyes," she murmured to herself, noting it for future reference.

Gilbert abruptly pivoted on his rear hooves, startling both females even as he dashed over to a retreating Elle. "Let's go, Elle."

"Huh?" Elle blinked and attempted to retreat again.

Only to have Gilbert catch her by the wrist as he dashed off, declaring, "Don't let go of me, darling! We're going to that ship on the sea!"

Elle's cry of dismay managed to drown out Rei's heartfelt oath as her friend was hauled along behind the minstrel, dangling at the end of his arm like a rushed kite.

———

It had taken twenty Lucre and a few potent threats to convince the trio of penguins at the Sea's Bounty that taking her along was a wonderful idea, Rei thought grumpily, but Salamander scorch her if she wasn't once again back on the rolling deck of the _S.S. Buccaneer._ And lo and behold, there was a warbling Gilbert standing at the railing with a certain siren who appeared resigned to her fate.

The sprite came aboard in time to catch Gilbert suggesting that she sing a few praises with him to their 'newfound love', only to have Elle unhappily—but firmly—decline. "Thank you, Gilbert. But I really can't. I can't sing."

"Don't say such sad things, sweet Elle," coaxed Gilbert with more gentleness than Rei would have been willing to credit him with. "Wings of a siren who doesn't sing wither, right?"

Elle blinked at him in astonishment. "You knew that?" When he nodded, she sighed. "But if I sing, ships will sink."

"Are you really sure that is what you should do?" he inquired softly.

Elle sighed again. "Whether I like it or not, this is who I am…"

While Gilbert mourned the tragedy of a siren who wouldn't sing, Rei made for the Captain's cabin, sheltered in the same part of the forecastle deck with the helm. Letting herself into the well-appointed room, she found Captain Tusk talking with one his penguins—and discovered that for once, they deserved the title of 'pirates'.

The crewmember was asking his captain why they'd let 'that horse' onboard, and if Captain Tusk had suddenly become artistic, in a worried sort of way that told the listeners that the speaker was half-dreading a 'yes'. Tusk levered himself up on his tail and bristled his moustache at his crewman. "Listen, penguin," he told the bird, "I don't know art, but I know what a thing's worth. We'll capture them and sell them to a millionaire! Things are set up, and we're just waiting for the right moment."

Trembling in awe, the penguin let out a sound of shock. "You're a real baddy, Cap'n!"

It was amazing how stern someone who had features less flexible than a human's could look, Rei mused as the Captain looked at his minion. "Listen to me, penguin. Real pirates ain't always gonna follow the 'right' way."

_Pirates aren't supposed to follow the 'right' way as a general rule,_ was Rei's thought to herself.

Tusk continued, "Pirates have both good and evil otters in their hearts."

Blinking, both the knife-fighter and crewmember made sure they heard correctly. "Um, otters, Cap'n?" For a moment, Rei thought he meant the 'you otter do this' sort of thing, which was still a little odd, but not nearly as odd as someone using real otters as metaphors.

Which Tusk was, she found as the walrus thumped his tail on the wooden flooring. "That's right, otters! Right now the evil otter's clattering seashells in my heart!"

Quivering from shock or awe, Tusk's crewman managed to get out, "Cap'n…….This is so moving!"

It was something all right, Rei groaned internally, letting herself back out. 'Moving' wasn't the right word, though. Still, the plot to capture Gilbert and Elle was more than likely real, which meant that Rei needed to get back up on deck on the double.

She found that the right moment had occurred sometime during the brief seconds she'd been in the deckhouse; Gilbert was down and tied at ankles and wrists by the time Rei made it back to her friend and would-be beau, with Elle fluttering madly in midair well clear of rigging and ropes.

"Untie the ropes!" Gilbert yelled, somewhere between anger and distress. "Don't you realize what you're doing!?" Rei heard Elle cry Gilbert's name in real fear, while the handful of penguins responsible for Gilbert's current predicament grumped about the siren getting away. The minstrel was nattering on in his usual fashion—Rei heard him moan something about 'tragedy' and 'poet of love' and promptly tuned him out.

What was happening around him was getting a lot more interesting.

Elle demanded, "What's gotten into you penguins?" while still hovering several feet above the aft deck. Her answer was only a wicked chuckle from the lead penguin and a reminder that they _were_ pirates, after all, so what could she expect? They were gonna do what they had to do.

Rei braced herself against the railing and waited for the other shoe to drop. The penguins were about to learn a very painful lesson that should have been obvious from the start: Don't Push a Siren When You're On a Ship.

Elle drifted down to land protectively in front of Gilbert, who was still bemoaning his expected fate—which had nothing to do with millionaires or dry land, for that matter—took a deep breath…and began to sing.

Immediately Rei was glad that she'd braced herself as the entire ship began shuddering. A penguin came dashing up the stairs from the foredecks, crying that the left hatch had been holed. Another bolted up and swept away again with a majority of the penguins following him to go fight a Tezzle-Mozzle. Explosions were rocking the _Buccaneer_ from rudder to figurehead; Rei ducked a piece of flying spar and clung harder. All around her were the shouts of penguins and the sounds of battle.

A third penguin dropped from the rigging to land in a dizzying tumble on the deck near Rei, where he promptly grabbed onto her leg and shouted over the riot, "The Orc is here! We're finished! The ship's gonna sink!! Please help us, Rei!!"

Figured. Rei shook the penguin off, got him to point her in the right direction, and sprinted down to the main deck. There amidst the torn hatch-covers and fallen pieces of spar and canvas was a beastie a good four times her height, slick hide a patching of white and black. It floated in the air, lashing out with four tentacles and a nasty set of teeth in a head that resembled a mundane orca's.

The knife-fighter eyed it, decided that it didn't really look so tough and that all the fight would require would be not tripping over crew or debris, and got to work turning the monster into fish-sticks. Sigh. Her students were going to murder her if they found out about this…

———

Rei draped herself against a railing when it was all over, feeling a little disappointed. The Orc, for all the panic about it, had been barely enough for a warm-up and ranked nowhere near even the flower-monsters in Ulkan Mines or Elle's lighthouse as far as challenge went. She'd only needed to dodge the tentacles, which always struck in groups of two or four, a cannon-ball style attack that kept splashing chunks of coral and rotted chests onto the decking, and a few magical attacks that were ridiculously easy to avoid.

Elle huddled barely a couple feet away; the siren had somehow managed to drag Gilbert from the upper deck into the narrow aisle that was called a hatchway and now stood shivering guard in front of him. They were all surrounded by angry, battered penguins, with Tusk hulking behind them, giving Elle a considering look.

"Cap'n!" shouted one penguin, "This be the siren who tried to sink our ship!!"

"Elle!! Run away before they kill you, love!" Gilbert cried, wriggling furiously against his bonds. Rei sighed; it was getting harder for her not to like the idiot, if only just a little. He was a romantic idiot and flighty as hell, but he had no end of courage and far too much chivalry for his own good.

"If I run away," Elle told Gilbert without taking her eyes from the pirates gathered around her, "you are going to be the one to get killed. I'm the one who did this."

Another penguin hissed, "Ooh, ready to pay for what she did, is she!?" Rei only grinned—the siren had found _her_ courage at last, hm?

Everyone jumped when Tusk's massive tail slammed the deck. "Stop it, penguins!" he commanded. "Can't ye tell when ye see a real man of the sea!?" For a moment, all anyone could do was stare at him and share bemused looks with each other. "How could ye harm someone who is sorry for what she's done?"

An outraged protest arose from his crew at that. Elle only bowed, wings folded tightly against her back. "I'm sorry…" she apologized, almost unheard over the tumult. "All I wanted to do was to scare you…But I almost caused a disaster!"

Tusk pushed several of his crew out of the way in order to give the siren as courtly a bow in return as he could manage. "Don't blame yerself so much, young lady. A ship ain't goin' to sink just because someone sang a song." The penguins heartily disagreed, which made the captain glare at them, moustache abristle. "Penguins, stir up that peanut butter in your heads and think. This ship here easily weighs 3,000 Du'Inkes. Now why do ye suppose the ship doesn't just sink into the sea?"

Rei thought about explaining concepts like 'water displacement' and 'buoyancy' but kept her mouth closed, wanting to hear what kind of crazy explanation Tusk had up his sleeve. When the crew admitted that they didn't know why the ship stayed on top of the water, their captain clucked his disapproval and told them, "Spirit. It be the spirit of us men of the sea. My spirit be 100, and ye penguins' are about one. Ye think a song will sink a ship held afloat by my manly spirit?"

Silence. Tusk turned back to Elle and told her kindly, "That ain't no story I made up, young lady. Try it."

Elle looked at him in horror. "No, I can't! It will really sink!"

"I don't care!" Tusk shot back. "All we have here are some penguins and a siren…And I'm some sort of sea mammal. A sinking ship ain't gonna do us any damage!"

One of the penguins spoke up. "We have a horse, too, Cap'n."

"And a sprite. But I can swim, too, so I guess I'm safe."

"But I…" cheeped Elle, now thoroughly torn. She was encouraged by Tusk, while Gilbert protested that he wasn't a horse and was ignored. Rei, meanwhile, could see her friend's resolve weakening and braced herself again.

Sink? Probably not. Get rattled like crazy? Definitely yes.

At last Elle's resolve not to sing broke under the insistence of Captain Tusk, and her beautiful voice rose on the sea air. Rei just sat back and watched the entertainment unfold. "When spri—ing comes to an eeend…"

Ka-blam, ka-boom! "See!?" demanded one crewman as they all rushed off. "Here we go again!"

"Aw, shut up!!" was Tusk's command.

"The co—olor of the sky is aqua blueee…"

"The left hatch be completely destroyed!"

"That happens every day. Go fix it!"

"Flower petals are flo—oaating in the a—air…"

"We got high waves comin' on the starboard side!"

"Men of the sea ain't scared of high waves!"

"The flooower wanted to go somewhe—ere and it decided to fly in the a—air…"

"The poop deck be about to go out! This ain't good!"

"I don't care! Ye penguins don't have the guts!"

"The flower blo—oms in your ha—and…Ple—ease fe—eel my lo—ove…"

Rei listened to one or two last fitful, abashed-sounding explosions (including one that nearly singed the tail of a nearby penguin), and then everything fell silent. Elle was staring in amazement around her at the still-floating ship, with the penguins doing much the same. Only Rei and Tusk seemed to be unsurprised about it, which amused the knife-fighter no end.

"See what I'm talkin' about?" the _Buccaneer_'s captain prompted gently to the agape siren. At their feet, Gilbert laughed exultantly.

"Ah, how wonderful! There's nothing to worry about, Elle!" Gilbert beamed up at her, then turned a wicked grin on the pirate crew. "I came up with a new song! Ohhhh, penguins are cra—anky because they don't ha—ave girlfriends…"

He was given a considering look by Tusk, who then informed his crew, "Make him walk the plank."

"Aye aye, Cap'n!!"

Rei collapsed into laughter.

———

Later that evening, after Rei had washed the salt out of her hair and skin, she sat on the floor next to Lil' Cactus' pot and told him all about her day. She'd already gotten scolded by Bud and Lisa for finding trouble again whenever she got more than five feet from the house, so she was only mildly irritated still.

And her pet spineball took care of that when he smiled up at her and said, "Fluffy fly away."

She loved her cactus.

————

I always have far too much fun watching the penguins panic in this side-quest. The noise they make when they land on the deck is hilarious.


	19. Two Torches, School Amour

**Author's Note:** Okay, boys and girls. I have important questions for you regarding a couple of upcoming chapters. The next one on the list is 'Lil' Cactus' and is only three pages long. The one after that is 'Lucky Clover', the next step in the Jumi Arc, and it somehow turned into a monstrous _twenty pages_ long. Now, should I post the two chapters separately, as is? Or should I cut 'Clover' in half and post Lil' Cactus' chapter with the first half? Let me have your answers in your reviews.

And for those of you out there who have only recently tuned in or have been observing in silence, give me a shout-out with your opinions, too. Okay? **End of Note.**

**Starlight's Delight:** Indeed, congratulations are in order! Copies—new or old—that are in pristine enough condition not to spazz are not the easiest (or cheapest) things to get a-hold of. New chapter? Wish granted! Ala-Kazam! _—waves away smoke, coughing—_ Just remember to use more chickens next time. Gods only knows I don't want Fanime going haywire. n,.,n

**Tiamat42:** Bodega was…entertaining, to say the least. At least I got my Tides clam chowder. n,.,n I'm glad you liked last chapter, I always enjoyed playing it through. The trick to getting it was that you had to do it before you went to Geo and he got turned to stone. If you didn't, you missed out on watching penguins panic and a later adventure involving the Diggers. More on that bit, later. PS—Yes, it is. One vote per reviewer. :p

**Meeerf:** Ah, good! I'm glad I'm doing better, though I think I'm going to backslide in a couple of chapters, as far as the description for Esmeralda goes. Feel free to skip it unless you want the details. You won't miss anything important that won't get filled in later. _—sweatdrops—_ I love poking fun at the penguins.

————

Rei stretched happily in the warm spring sunlight, luxuriating in the feeling of sunlight on her skin. It was middling spring, now, and there were more fine days than there were wet ones. Bud and Lisa were progressing nicely, so she'd graduated them to coming up with their own projects and seeing them through. The Elven children had cemented themselves into the daily lives of the villagers in Domina; Rei doubted than anything could pry them out, now…or pry Bud _away_ from Rachel, for that matter.

The knife-fighter herself had taken, instead, to training them in combat. Lisa's use of the broom she'd inherited from the twins' father had been adapted into staff and spear; Bud's frying pan from their mother was shifted into learning the hammer. She'd started taking them on more trips for materials and the like, though nothing big had happened since that incident with Gilbert and the pirates.

Bud had developed a taste for exploring on those trips, while Lisa had confirmed that she preferred staying at home, in her 'territory'. Someone had to take care of the house, she'd explained, and the village children preferred her to tend the scrapes and scratches that they picked up. Which had led to Rei nudging her girl apprentice towards the section of the library dedicated to medicines and healing.

She'd invited Lisa along on a trip to Gato Grottoes early this morning for that reason, but Lisa had declined, elbows deep in the herb garden that had resulted from those nudges. Bud had already disappeared off to Domina to check for any new traveling peddlers and to sneak a quick visit to Rachel, or he'd no doubt have jumped at the opportunity.

Even her pets were in the mood to stay home. Nip was in the process of going from winter coat to summer, and was disgusted by the cloud of hair he sent poofing out with every bounce no matter how much he'd been groomed. Tsuta was near the tail-end of shedding his skin and was always touchy when the protective layer over his eyes clouded.

So Rei was alone for a change, without even a pet monster for company.

That was alright. She'd be able to surprise Lisa with seeds and seedlings for her new garden, then. So the knife-fighter whistled cheerfully as she climbed the path towards Gato's Temple of Healing, taking simple pleasure in the burn of muscles and sun on her bare shoulders.

Her whistling faltered a little when she passed the spot where Rubens had stood last year, but Rei shook herself and brought her little tune back up to speed, quieting only when she walked through the huge double doors, left open to the lovely weather.

Rei hadn't seen Daena since almost as long, so she slipped into the hallway that led into the convent section of the Temple, finding the cat-girl standing guard in front of another, smaller set of double doors. "Daena! How've you been?" greeted the knife-fighter cheerfully. It took a moment for the concerned frown that her friend was wearing to sink in, but when it did, Rei didn't hesitate. "What's wrong?"

"Hello, Rei," Daena replied, long tail twitching uneasily around her ankles. "Do you know a guy named Escad?"

Rei twitched, remembering an encounter in Rosiotti's Jungle. "I might have had the displeasure of a meeting."

"Yeah, well..." Shifting uneasily, the Temple warrior looked over her shoulder at the doors. "He's Matilda's old friend, and it seems like he finally came back. He's in there. Go ahead, I will allow it."

Rei whined, "Do I _have_ to? He bugs the hell out of me."

"Better you than me. He might watch his tongue around you."

Groaning, the golden-haired sprite slipped by Daena and through the doors. On the other side was a large room decorated with the same sort of carvings that were all over the temple, a huge stained-glass window acting as a skylight of sorts near the ceiling. In the middle of the room was a padded stone…well, a bed or couch was the closest description Rei could come to. It was contoured so that the occupant would remain somewhat upright without the use of pillows, yet offered comfort that was obvious even from the door. The light from the window fell in rainbow spills onto that bit of comfort.

A small, ancient woman lay on the couch, garbed head to toe in sacred ochre red, held by the Order to which this Temple belonged as earth touched by the blood of the Goddess. No veil hid her face or her joy at the sight of the man standing in front of her. His back was turned to the sprite at the door, but Rei had no problem recognizing the arrogant Escad. Not when he was still wearing those idiotic shorts.

"Matilda…" murmured Escad, the acoustics of the room easily bringing even the slightest noise to an embarrassed Rei. This was no conversation she wanted part of! "It's been only ten years since I went to the Underworld…How is it possible that you've aged so much?"

The priestess smiled in joy, tears running down her face as she reached out to touch his cheek. "Oh, Escad….You're alive! It has been only ten years since I lost two precious friends…You and…"

"…Irwin?" Escad finished bitterly. "Stop thinking about that demon. He took away your elemental powers to fuel his own ambitions. It's his fault you've aged so much, isn't it!?"

"Don't say that," chided Matilda. "I'm not as unhappy as you think."

Rei attempted to slip out of the room while she had a chance, only to be betrayed by the same acoustics that had sent the occupants' words to her ears. Escad whirled, sword drawn, demanding, "Who's there!.?" He stared for a moment at the blushing Rei half-way out the door, then took a step backward as recognition hit. "Oh, it's you."

"Um, yeah. Sorry." Rei scratched the back of her head, feeling her blush get deeper as she stared at the floor. "I didn't mean to eavesdrop, but Daena didn't tell me you'd only just gotten here. She said to go in, so…"

Escad scowled as he put his sword away. "So you overheard us. I guess you know everything now."

"No, not really."

"A demon is trying to kill the head priestess here. This is your chance to make your name known to all."

Rei felt her temper beginning to rise. Gut instinct told her that she would _never_ enjoy this man's company. "You know, some of us are more concerned about taking care of the people around us than we are about making names for ourselves," she flung back, voice nearly a hiss. She'd been told that her eyes went hot and hard at times like this, like a pair of emerald dunked into a fire.

Her eyes, narrowed into a fierce glare, had Escad stepping back until he bumped up against Matilda's couch, hand white-knuckled on the hilt of his sword. "I care about these people! That's why I'm telling you not to trust that demon!"

"Haven't you said enough?" Daena asked the knight coldly, stepping into the room. "I want you to leave."

"Quit wasting our time and our air," Rei added in a growl, taking one warning step forward.

Escad unburied his courage and his arrogance and stood tall, gazing down his nose at the knife-fighter. "I have learned the way of the sword from Olbohn. It's the Wisdoms' will to kill that demon."

Matilda again reached out to touch him; this time her fingertips came to rest weakly on his arm. "Escad…" she whispered. "I am overjoyed to know both of you are still alive. Isn't that enough?"

For a moment, Escad returned the touch, his face a mask made from half-a-dozen emotions that had been left to brew for far too long. Then he looked both of the waiting fighters in the eyes, walked to the door, and turned back to them all. "I'm warning you…Beware of him."

And then he was gone.

Rei shoved her bangs out her face, mouth twisted up into a bitter smile. "Oh, I've heard that sort of tune before," she spat to no one in particular, anger bringing out her accent even more than usual. "Hatred and jealousy and prejudice all set aboil with fanaticism. No doubt, the only will to have this Irwin of yours dead is his. I don't even know anything _about_ the man but that he's been in the Land of Faeries for a few years."

"Do you want to know about Irwin?" Daena asked her friend seriously. When Rei gave her a sharp nod, the Temple warrior began the story. "Irwin, Escad, Matilda and I grew up together. Matilda was born into a family of priests, and Escad into a family of knights. My family has served the Temple as warriors. Irwin has demon's blood in him, but that's all we know. But no one in this world cares what race you are."

The cat-girl shrugged, her fine pelt rippling in the light. "Of course, Matilda acted the same around Escad and Irwin. Escad didn't like that at all, so he tried to kill Irwin in the mines. But it was Escad who ended up falling into the Underworld. Irwin is not the one who started this, it's Escad!"

Rei snorted, soothing her temper by rubbing the back of her neck. "Why am I not surprised."

"For the past ten years, we never had such problems," whispered Matilda, covering her face with her hands to hide her tears. "Why now…?"

Rei had nothing to say to that that wouldn't make her sound like a bully, so she kept her mouth shut and merely let herself out of the room.

Outside, she found a nun sprawled unconscious on the floor, as another nun walked past her and into the Dreamweaving Room. Rei stiffened as the scent of mothballs hit her nose. Mothballs meant that something had been in storage. The nun that just went by had been wearing a much older style of habit, the linen dark with age.

The knife-fighter swore and bolted back into the room.

Daena was half-conscious against a wall, limp from whatever blow had thrown her there. The stranger stood on the far side of Matilda, eyes triumphant above the veil. "For our lord!" was her cry as magic carried her and Matilda away.

Struggling to rise, Daena let out a shout of dismay and a curse of her own as Rei helped her to her feet and steadied the cat-girl until the room stopped spinning. "That was someone disguised as a nun! Please…help me look for Matilda!"

"Like I'd do anything else," Rei told her friend, helping her out into the main part of the Temple. Daena recovered quickly, walking under her own power by the time they reached the hallway. There a cluster of nuns had gathered, wanting to know what the noise had been about.

"Abbess Matilda has been kidnapped!" snapped Daena to the nuns, making a sharp gesture in emphasis. "Close off all exits!" Like a covey of Needlebeaks they scattered to obey. Within seconds the air in the Temple began to hum the way a hive of bees does when it's kicked. Rei and Daena ran outside onto the thin path leading to the rest of Gato, where they found the kidnapper, Matilda in her grasp, and Escad defiantly blocking the way into the village below.

"You work for Irwin, don't you!.? What are you going to do to her!?"

"I only go by Lord Irwin's plans!" giggled the kidnapper. "Too bad!" She and her victim disappeared into the grip of another teleportation spell.

Daena hissed like the cat she was. "He can't leave this holy area with that kind of magic! This is going to be his last day on earth!"

"Maybe not," Rei countered, feeling that unholy glee fill her at the thought of another battle against someone who twisted the world out of balance. Daena demanded an explanation, tail lashing, and Rei told her, "It's can't be his last day if it's a she."

"This is no time for jokes, Rei!" Daena snapped, leading the way down the mountain.

Rei still got the last word in. "Funny. I always thought life-and-death situations were the _perfect_ time for jokes. Bad guys never take you seriously that way until they're already dead."

———

Escad met them at the start of the Paths of Asceticism. "I lost them," he admitted in a growl, slamming his sword into its' sheath. "This place is too vast to search. They might be hiding, waiting until we're gone."

"There's a sealed Meditation Room we haven't searched," Deana told him after a nun whispered in her ear. "Could they be hiding there?"

"It's sealed?" Escad raised an eyebrow. "How are we supposed to open that?"

"I've arranged for it to be opened, in case of emergency," came the explanation.

Escad's paranoia showed through when he shifted his weight and sent his gaze back down the main paths. "They could have gotten away somehow. I'm going to look a little more." And he headed down the trails at a lope.

Daena looked over at Re. "I can take you to the sealed room," she offered. "What do you want to do?"

Rei thought a moment, tracing down a hunch the was niggling at the back of her mind. "I think we should check it out. Escad's got the rest of the mountain covered."

Daena nodded and began moving her hands in the patterns for a spell. "Alright, I'll take us to the steps leading to the room."

Rei closed her eyes as the strands of magic wrapped around her and whirled her into darkness. She had to take a half-step to regain her balance when the world popped back into existence, and glanced up at a discomfited feline warrior. Daena muttered about being out of practice and an apology in the same breath as the two mounted the few steps that led into the large space of the Meditation Room.

"Red plush carpet?" Rei murmured softly to her friend in disbelief. Her shoes had sunk a good half-inch into the carpet's pile and another half-inch of thick dust, the vibrant color of the carpet showing through in two sets of footprints. "In a monastery?" The walls were nearly hidden behind large crates and various religious items cloaked in uneven shadows; the place had been relegated to a storage room in the past, it seemed.

"Previous leaders didn't have Matilda's austere tastes," was the reply, before the two spotted the missing Abbess and her kidnapper standing at the far end of the high-ceilinged room. "Matilda!"

The fake nun let out a cackle of laughter and spoke mockingly to the two fighters. "You didn't even realize this was a trap!"

"What do you mean, 'this was a trap'?" Daena demanded, tail lashing around her legs.

"A trap. A noun meaning a plan to trick someone in order to put the victim at a disadvantage," murmured Rei wickedly, gazing steadily at her target. "Other words could be 'ambush', 'con', or 'deception'."

Daena took her eyes off Matilda long enough to level a hearty glare at the sprite. "There are very uncomfortable places in the Underworld for people like you," she told Rei grimly. Rei only laughed, a sound that rang off the ceiling, a wolf with prey in her sights. Turning back to the fake nun, Daena let out a low, angry hiss. "I'm going to make you regret what you've done!"

Rei stepped adroitly to the side as two other nuns, these ones real, rushed into the room. Her delaying tactic had worked nicely. "Abbess Matilda!" the two cried, rushing forward. "We must bring her to safety!"

It was rather suspicious when the kidnapper simply let the two nuns lead Matilda out of the room, but that was explained as she/he/it remarked, "That's right, keep her out of the battle…But I'll get her back. Take her for now," she—Rei figured it had to be a she, a male just wouldn't be able to hit that high a pitch while laughing—encouraged, standing right where she'd been the whole time. "The show is about to begin!"

"Sugar," Rei chuckled as her knives spun out of their sheathes and into her palms with satisfying smacks of weighted hilts, "you don't know how right you are."

The impostor cackled. "I'll take Matilda to Lord Irwin after the battle..." Cloth rustled as the shrouded head was tilted invitingly. "Well, shall we start the party?"

Before either fighter could leap forward, darkness shrouded the kidnapper, swirling away again a moment later to reveal a green-skinned creature in a purple, beaded loin-cloth, a long head-growth wrapped around a heavy neck like a scarf.

Rei swore. "Not another damn djin!" she cried in frustration, pointing a knife at the creature floating several feet off the ground, lower half terminating in a thinning wisp of smoke. "Where did that twit Irwin dig you up, anyway? I hope you're a better challenge than the last one!"

"I assure you," hissed the djin, "I will be."

With that, the battle was joined. Despite its' bold words, this fae was no greater a challenge to the combined efforts of Rei and Daena than the first was to Rei alone. Mostly because it had a similar fighting style, and Rei was able to warn her friend about the nastier attacks in the djin's arsenal. The main problem they had was avoiding a move where the very rug was pulled up under their feet and flicked, rolling any unwary into a breath-stealing tumble across the whole room.

But knives and flails worked just as well on djin ectoplasm as they did on ordinary flesh, and soon the djin vanished with a wail and an explosion of multicolored smoke.

"And _stay_ in your damn bottle!" Rei shouted after it, knocking dust off of her clothes. She'd taken a tumble once or twice when she couldn't evade her opponent's spinning fists, and had gotten quite a coating of it in the process. A powerful sneeze shook off more dust, which triggered an entire paroxysm of sneezes, eventually driving Rei out of the Meditation Room and into the cleaner air of the tunnels beyond. Daena followed, laughing despite herself.

———

The group met up again in the Dreamweaving Room, Matilda once again ensconced on her padded stone couch. Escad had been pacing the room angrily as Rei and Daena had trooped in, a few remaining smudges of dust dimming the brightness of Rei's hair. Now he stood by the couch, arms crossed over his chest.

Matilda reached out a pleading hand, which was ignored by the knight. "Escad…Please listen to me." When Daena urged her friend to rest, offering to say what needed saying, Matilda told her no, she would say it. "Escad…" the aged priestess confessed, "I did not want to give up my freedom to become a priestess. Irwin only wanted to free me from a life bound by rules."

Escad made a disgusted snort, hand moving in a sharp gesture. "Wake up, Matilda! Stop letting the demon do this to you! Did you ever consider how Irwin will use the powers he took from you!?"

"That's enough, Escad!!" Daena snapped, stepping forward. Rei wisely kept herself in the background, here only at the insistence of the cat-girl. "And you, Matilda…" her tone gentled. "You need to rest."

"You never took me seriously, even when we were children," spat Escad, whirling on his heel and stalking for the door. "But I'm not going to let the demon gain any more power!" The door slammed behind him, Matilda beginning to weep into her hands. Daena was able to give no comfort.

Rei only thought to herself, _I suppose love, if that's what it was, makes even the demon-blooded do strange things_, and let herself quietly out. There were seedlings to purchase, and apprentices to remind her that not everyone in the world was as full of anger and pain as a certain heart-blind knight.

———

How anyone could live in a city built in the desert, Rei wasn't certain, but the people of Geo seemed quite content with the blazing temperatures of even the spring sun—which was quite hot enough for her, thank you, and please Goddess, don't make her come here during summer!

The reason that _she_ was here was because Kathinja, the half-basilisk professor at the Academy of Magic, had sent her a letter inviting Rei to have a more leisurely chat about Bud and Lisa's progress. Like when there wasn't a headmaster trying to blow up the world, or something. Rei had written back her agreement and the two had set a date to meet up.

The twins were staying at home once again, for similar reasons as the last trip she'd made, just over a week ago. Lisa was busy tending her brand-new herb garden, which had been dug close enough to Trent for him to give advice to the Elf girl, but far enough away that the plot would still get plenty of sunlight without interfering with crops or Trent's roots. Bud was head-over-heels with Rachel by now and had stopped bothering to hide that fact.

Rei and Jennifer merely looked on indulgently and conspired to keep this new development from Mark. Rachel's father was a dour man, but no one was quite certain how he'd react if he learned that Bud was courting his daughter. Neither woman wanted to see the budding romance put paid to by a defensive father.

What it meant, though, in the short run, was that Bud was keeping himself close to home so he could visit Rachel whenever he got the opportunity.

Rei's opinion—kept to herself, of course—was that so long as he got his chores and lessons done, she didn't mind if he spent the whole day in Domina. It meant that he was building more stamina with every trip.

The knife-fighter marked off what she'd done this week after she'd gotten home from Gato. There was that incident with the musicians Capella and Diddle that had taken her to Luon and the Chobin Hood caves that had been the hideout of the bandits she'd cleaned out so long ago. Then there was that shopping list for Miss Yuka that had been ingredients for something to help her pet, Pee-Wee, to hatch. He'd turned out to be a cute little Needlebeak—and a generous one. He'd given her a ring that was useful against spells when she'd gone over to pet the newly hatched tame monster.

But that was days ago, Rei thought, dismissing the tasks as things that anyone would do. The knife-fighter whistled a jaunty tune as she followed the map that Kathinja had included with the last letter to the small, open courtyard that had a really good juice bar. Rei could use a drink, which made the meeting place doubly convenient.

Her whistle hit a sour pitch and silenced when she found the courtyard held not only a number of students in several colors and Kathinja, but a certain idiot centaur attempting to woo said professor. Wearing a wicked grin, Rei leaned against the edge of a building and watched the one-sided drama unfolding.

"Oh, darling! When I see your eyes, I'm so fascinated I can't move an inch!"

Busy strumming on her own lute, the reptilian woman glanced up through her bangs and told him, "Sorry, kiddo…You'll be petrified if you stare into my eyes." Two of the three students present immediately edged away, staring in amazement at the crazy horse-man that was actually _trying_ to get Miss Kathinja to stare at him.

"Heavens! I've never felt this way before. I feel it all over!" sighed Gilbert, flanks twitching.

"Look, kiddo, I'm part basilisk. You're not feeling love, it's preliminary petrification! Got it?" asked Kathinja.

Gilbert quivered some more. "How poetic! I'd turn to stone for you, my love!" He pulled his lute in front of him and began strumming on it. "Listen, my sweet! My charming tenor!" Rei plugged her ears as he began crooning, only to break off when the object of his affection and began to walk away. "Oh, pleeease don't leeeave me!"

"Have fun," Kathinja snorted. "My students are boycotting. I gotta go find them."

"Well, I can do that sort of thing, darling! You just need all your students to go back to school?"

Kathinja put a hand on her hip. "Well, yeah. That sure will help me out." And she walked off, presumably to go track down her students.

Gilbert stood where he was for a few moments more, still trembling—though whether that was from his latest crush or from Kathinja's petrifying gaze, Rei wasn't sure. "Darling…" he sighed, "You're so…Ohhh…Ah, I must stop! I'll melt if I keep thinking about her!"

Rei sauntered past him to the juice bar, tossing over her shoulder, "I wouldn't say that. More likely you'll just turn into a five-Lucre, glorified garden gnome."

"Oh! It's the warrior maiden from the ship, isn't it?" Gilbert said, snapping out of whatever daydream he'd been in. "I don't think I've ever gotten your name."

"It's Rei." She handed him a cup, her own a blissful patch of cold against her palm and fingers. "I see you're up to your usual stunts, as always. You play some risky games, Gilbert."

The centaur stamped a rear hoof sheepishly. "But Kathinja _is_ lovely, isn't she? She has a spirit that burns so."

Rei couldn't really argue with that. So instead, she took a sip of her juice and asked, "So what can I do for you today? From what I heard, there's something you wanted to help your pretty basilisk-lady with."

Gilbert blushed. Actually _blushed_, from neck to hairline. "You do have a knack for showing up when I need help," he admitted. He stood for a moment, shifting his weight from hoof to hoof, before blurting, "Well, there _is_ something I need your help with…I need to convince my darling's students to go back to school. What do you say? Will you help me out?"

Rei took another sip of juice, letting him dangle for a moment as she appeared to think it over. Actually, it sounded interesting, _and_ it was a good chance to get to know the students that had known her apprentices the best before they'd come to her. Not to mention it would also pay back Kathinja for Rei's 'relocation' of the spellbook that Mephianse had stolen the summer before. "I suppose," she sighed playfully. "You wait right here. I'll come get you once I'm done."

"Oh, thank you!" Gilbert seized one of her hands and dropped a kiss on the knuckles of her fingers themselves, since the back of her hand and the knuckles attached to it were covered by her arm-guard. "You're so kind! You must be so popular!"

Freeing her hand, Rei wrinkled her nose at the centaur. "Really, Gilbert! You're way too silly to take seriously. Get a grip."

She walked off to go chat with the three students aimlessly wandering the patio, shaking her head. What Monique saw in that bundle of romantic bubble-headedness, she'd never know.

———

Rei strolled back to the patio a little over an hour later. She'd met jokesters, dreamers, boys who were in love with books, and one very odd student who had been quite intent on working on his mind-magics. They'd all wanted her to say hello to Bud and Lisa for them after she'd convinced each boy to go back to class; she'd forgotten how fast gossip could travel amongst children, but they knew all about her and her taking in of the Elf twins.

She'd also gotten a chance to apologize to some of the boys who had been there at Duma Desert, which was nice.

"Okay, Gilbert!" she told the centaur as she walked up to where he waited, next to the juice bar. "They're all done with the boycott. Have at. One of the boys said you'd find Kathinja on the terrace outside the main gates."

"Thank you!" And the minstrel galloped off, face shining. Rei waited a moment, watching him go, then tilted her head back towards the bar-tender.

"Five Lucre says Kathinja 'gazes him before he gets her to go on a date," she offered.

"No bet," replied the puzzle-piece man, grinning. "Too easy."

Rei shrugged, then jogged off. She wanted to find out just how far the centaur got to push before Kathinja pushed back.

———

The answer turned out to be 'not very'. Rei came up to the large gates that pierced the heavy wall around Geo just in time to catch Gilbert's observation that all of Kathinja's students had returned to their studies. The professor agreed, commenting dryly, "Yeah, now we can have real classes. Bye now!"

Gilbert slipped around to block Kathinja's escape, a hurt frown pulling at his lips. "Whoa, hold on, darling! What do you mean, 'Bye now?' After you're done with the kids, how 'bout you and me go on a date, hmmm?"

Kathinja regarded him irritably, hands on her hips, tail lashing. "You are so annoying," she growled. "Let me go already. I'll turn you to stone if you keep pestering me."

Her would-be beau made as though to swoon, clasping his hands over his heart and proclaiming, "Oh, turn me to stone, baby! Make a statue of my gorgeous body, darling!"

Rei nearly wrecked the moment with a fit of giggling. Oh, Gilbert didn't have a high opinion of himself at all!

"You want to keep me forever!" continued Gilbert in a dreamy voice as Kathinja just got more aggravated. "Oh, how romantic! We can do it, baby! Sculpt our eternal happiness together!"

"Hmph!" Kathinja glanced over at the shadows around the gates, where a knife-fighter had clapped hands over her mouth to keep her laughter from escaping, then turned back to glare at the centaur. "Sculpt your eternal happiness alone!"

"No way, baby!" cried Gilbert as magic gathered around a pair of smoky green eyes and exploded, slamming him with a bolt of light. Rei yipped, blinded by the light. By the time she blinked her eyes clear, Kathinja was gone and there was a Gilbert-shaped statue standing forlornly on the terrace.

Shaking her head, Rei walked over to the statue and looked into unhappy stone eyes. "I tried to warn you, silly creature," she told him, feeling mildly exasperated. "It serves you right, chasing after every woman but the one who cares for you most. Maybe this will give you a chance to get your head on straight."

She wasn't worried. There were spells out there to undo curses like this, even if Rei herself couldn't use them. Xan had told her of a few, on his visits home and in his letters. There was one the mermaids used, even, though even _he_ had only heard about it. So Rei merely made a mental note to go talk to Flameshe and Monique about breaking the stone-gaze, and went to go find Kathinja again.

Rei had an appointment to keep, after all.

———

Needlebeaks: aerial-type monsters. Rather like a bird, only shaped like a beach-ball with no discernable neck. Stubby wings, usually have a crest of some sort, and possess some of the sharpest beaks known in the aerial kingdom.

I love the chapter with Kathinja. It's right up there with the Jumi Arc.


	20. Lil' Cactus

Okay, boys and girls. Fanime is this weekend, so I'm feverishly working on finishing up costumes (and panicking, but that's normal) and will be gone the whole weekend. So to make everyone happy, I'm updating with both Lil' Cactus and Four-Leaf Clover at the same time. Oh, and an Okami one-shot over in _Paths_, so feel free to go check it out. (Hint, hint!)

Review replies are going to be a bit rushed this time, sorry. n,.,n!

**Starlight's Delight:** Glad to hear your disc is working. Happy Memorial Day!

**Tiamat42:** Because Gilbert knows perfectly well that Rei will hit him, first. Then say 'no'. It comes from watching her kick monster butt. And you can't kill me this time, neener.

**Meeerf:** Opinions are always good. Uweh? I missed a line? Nerts! And I liked that line, too. Hm. Note to self, rewrite maybe someday, include missed line. Happy Memorial Day!

———

Bud was sick, and his family was worried. Rei had been talking with him a few days ago, and the young mage had just flopped over mid-conversation. None of the usual cures had worked, either from Rei's workbench or Granny Lobelia's apothecary shop.

Mind you, it wasn't anything life-threatening, as far as Rei could tell. It was only—_only!_—a low-grade, persistent fever accompanied by bone-deep fatigue. All it did was keep Bud confined to his bed upstairs, restricted to soups and juices to keep him hydrated. It made her student as grumpy as a dragon with a toothache.

But since nothing Rei or Granny Lobelia did put a dent in the illness, Rei was forced to admit defeat and visit the town's fortune-teller, Meimei, in the hopes that one of her fortunes would help.

Rei waited impatiently as the sprite spun around in her giant basket of fruit, her hair like bunches of grapes bouncing against Meimei's back as she slowed, stopped, and bent down to pick up the pineapple that had stopped at her feet.

"Hmm…" Meimei murmured, reading the language on the pineapple's skin that only she could understand. "It says… 'A cactus will save the sick child.'" Lowering the fruit, Meimei tilted her head in thought and made another considering noise. "Maybe you should squeeze its juice and have the kid drink it…?"

Rei thanked the fortune-teller and bolted for home, cursing herself for five kinds of fool. The cacti that she and Xan had as unusual house-pets had belonged to their father and mother, and their grandparents before that. Why hadn't she thought to ask them? For all their innocence and simple way of looking at things, the two spine-balls had seen and learned a lot in their time. Xan had taken his cactus with him to meet another orchard tree he'd found out past the Ulkan Mines, but _her_ cactus was still safe at home, keeping an eye on Bud.

Or not, as Rei found when she got home. Lisa met her at the front door, distress making her ponytail bounce. "The cactus upstairs got up and ran away!" the Elf girl cried. Rei swore and ran upstairs to where her pet was _supposed_ to be, sitting in his little pot by her dresser. Instead, there was only the pot and a dirt-smudged scrap of paper sitting on top of it.

Frowning, Rei picked up the note and puzzled out the scratchy letters inked across it, reading each word aloud. "I…went…ask…Gaeus…how…make…potion." Huh? She went over it again, trying the note against her mental grammar-checker. Her face cleared as it clicked, the note fluttering to the ground as Rei snatched up her pack and bolted back out the door for Luon.

_'I went to ask Gaeus how to make a potion.'_

———

Rei was panting as she entered the dead-end that the living hill, Gaeus, called home. Her normal lope would have gotten her here with plenty of breath to spare, but it would have taken longer. Thus, she'd sprinted like mad instead and used the Boink at the start of Luon.

"Gaeus!" she called as she scrambled onto the large stone talons that sat at the right height for climbing. "Gaeus, have you seen Lil' Cactus?"

With a deep rumble, the stone hand that she knelt on rose until she was even with the heavy, square-jawed, dog-like face of the Wisdom. His kind voice, deep and rough, filled the air around her. "Welcome, Rei. Your friend the cactus just dropped by to ask how to make a potion. I told him it's better to ask Selkie about things like spells and potions."

"Are you serious!.?" Rei demanded, gasping. "You mean I'm gonna have to run to the Jungle to catch up with him!.?"

"I thought you'd have learned a teleport spell by now," rumbled Gaeus.

"I have! It's just that I can't seem to teleport short distances anymore," explained the sprite. "Some kind of stupid block, I guess. Gotta go!"

"Come again, my child," the Wisdom bade her gently, and lowered her back to the ground. Rei took off—at her normal lope, this time—heading for the Jungle that Rosiotti and his helpers called home.

———

Skidding to a stop in the ruins-filled clearing that held Rosiotti's throne, Rei rested her weight on her hands above her knees and thanked the Mana Goddess for helpful Flowerling males who were able to teleport people short distances. That much less ground for her to run.

Rosiotti gave her a considering look as the sprite caught her breath, his two penguin helpers watching in amazement. Even after the scuffle with Du'Cate, they'd never seen her so out of breath before.

Rei waited until she could talk without gasping before she asked the penguin twins—because Goddess help her if she could tell those two apart—"I don't suppose you've seen a little cactus about yea high?" And she held a hand out, palm flat, parallel to the ground at knee height.

One of them stepped forward and spoke in Selkie's bright, cheery voice. "Lil' Cactus stopped by," she informed the sprite. "He said the little sorcerer had fallen ill. From the way he described it, it sounded like an illness all sorcerers get. I told him about Brownie, who just got over that illness."

Rei cocked her head to the side, rummaging in her memory. That name sounded familiar… "Brownie? That student at the Academy in Geo? Sweet little kid, kinda shy?"

"That's the one!" chirped Selkie.

Rei gave her a disbelieving look. "And just how did you find that out, huh?"

Selkie contrived to look mysterious. "I have my ways…"

That earned her a snort. "Right. Amalette must have told you." At least this time Rei could teleport. Geo was _definitely_ far enough away that the spell she'd learned from watching Sierra would work. "Thanks anyway!" And she 'ported away in a swirl of magic.

"She worries too much," grumbled Rosiotti. Giggling, Selkie nodded her agreement.

———

Rei popped into being on the empty roof of the Academy. Kathinja had suggested it as a safe place to teleport to and from when the knife-fighter had talked with her last month, since no students were allowed up there and it wasn't quite flat enough to stage experiments on.

Natural agility and Kathinja's remembered suggestions on paths got Rei down with only a minor scratch or two from vegetation, and the knife-fighter scampered into the main hall that led to the classrooms and library. Standing in the doorway to the main classroom, right where she'd last seen him, was the aptly-named Brownie. He had been the only student who hadn't actually been boycotting class, and he still wore the brown robe that marked him as a student of Conjury.

"Hi, Brownie!" Rei greeted as she trotted up.

"Hi, Miss Rei," he replied, still just that touch shy that made him absolutely adorable. He never failed to make Rei want to pick him up and treat him like a puppy that had gotten lost. "What are you doing here?"

"I'm on the hunt for my pet cactus. Have you see him?"

Brownie nodded solemnly. "He asked me all about that illness I had. It's something all mages get, but pirates' potions cure it quick. I got mine from David."

Rei threw up her hands with a cry. "How do you people even meet?" she demanded to empty air, careful not to let her voice grow too loud. There were classes in session, after all. Relenting, she ruffled Brownie's hair under his mages' cap with a 'thank you' and went back to the roof. Time to go scare whoever was in the crow's nest on the _S.S. Buccaneer. _

A thought occurred to her as she climbed. How had Lil' Cactus gotten here before her?

———

David wasn't much help, either. When Rei wobbled up to him, her sea-legs nowhere to be found, he told her that Lil' Cactus had been and gone. Amalette the Pelican had already taken him home, along with a potion that the pirate lackey had given him. So Rei merely teleported where she'd stood back to Domina, growling about being led on a wild goose chase and complaining about cacti who didn't give a person advance warning before they went off on adventures.

Pelican was strolling on her route along the outer edges of western Domina when Rei caught up, having 'ported herself into the little square that Capella and Diddle used to play at, the one with the Mana Goddess fountain.

When Rei asked her what she'd done with Lil' Cactus, the mail-carrier sing-songed, "Lil' Cactus hurt me. He hurt me. So sharp in my mouth, mouth. But–you–know–what? My job is the mail, the mail! Put him in the box, and I'm all done!"

"He's in the mailbox. Great." With a groan, Rei stretched her sore legs into a semblance of her normal lope and headed home, calling over her shoulder, "Thanks, Amalette!"

Lil' Cactus was indeed stuffed into her mailbox, Rei discovered as she vaulted the front gate. His head-flower was shut, head down. Being stuck in there apparently made him depressed. But he cheered up the second he saw Rei, and held up a green glass bottle that sloshed when it moved. "I got potion!" he declared proudly.

"That's wonderful, Lil' Cactus," Rei told him with real feeling. "But how am I supposed to get you out of there?"

"…"

———


	21. Lucky Clover

So Tiamat 42 won't kill me. ;p

———

A month passed and spring was in full, glorious riot. The trio at Haven Tree Cottage were kept busy with things like gardening, training, and trying to keep up with Trent's crops of produce. The grandfatherly tree was having a good year and the Mana flows around the little house had strengthened since last spring, with the result that his crops ripened after being only a few days on the vine. Not that Rei was complaining: more harvests meant more food to put into storage, with the extra making her a profit at market.

Bud had only grown an inch since the beginning of winter, though his spellcasting and that of his sister's had improved considerably. Rei had to keep herself from chortling with glee every time she thought about how the teachers at Geo's Academy would react if they saw her foster-children now. Bud was proving to have an excellent grasp on the more hands-on kinds of magics, while Lisa had the delicate touch of an artisan with the wards and sigils that drove her spells. Not to mention a formidable back-hand with that broom of hers.

It was funny, actually, to see her walk through town these days. Lisa had caught up to her brother in height; combined with the slow maturation of her features, she had practically every local boy falling into tongue-tied silence whenever she passed by. And she hadn't even started noticing yet, too busy with her garden and her education.

Rei sighed in absolute contentment one sunny, beautiful day, in her preferred seat on the top step of the tiny porch. Her pantry was full, her students were thriving, the monsters were convinced they lived in paradise, and Xan had written again, promising to be home in time for his birthday a week before Midsummer. Life couldn't be better.

Except…

Her contentment wavered at that traitorous little thought, then faded. Except…Elazul and Pearl hadn't come by, or even written a proper letter since her birthday. She refused to call a few absentminded scribbles on a piece of paper a letter. Notes, at best, really, and that was when she was feeling generous.

No one in Domina had seen them, either. She'd asked about the Jumi pair so often now that the first thing people said to her these days was 'no sign of them yet'.

Rei growled a little, then nibbled at her lip. She and the twins had taken care of all this morning's chores. Trent's latest bunch of veggies wouldn't be ready until tomorrow at the earliest; their monsters had been fed, groomed, and exercised. She had nothing that needed to be forged, carved, or sewn, nor was her next lot of goods due at Mark's until next week. Her medicinal herb cabinet was fully stocked.

Right, then. Rising to her feet, the knife-fighter tracked down her students at their projects and told them that she was going to check in Domina again for any sign of Pearl or Elazul. She didn't bother telling them about the persistent tugging feeling that was at the back of her mind, but that didn't make it any less real. After a few token complaints, the twins sighed their acknowledgment and off their teacher went, vaulting the front gate and loping off for town.

Bud dusted his hands together and looked over at his sister. The two were on their knees, weeding Lisa's herb garden. The youth's robe had been discarded to one side; all he wore was a light shirt with the sleeves rolled up and a pair of trousers. Lisa wore a smock and their feet were bare. "I hope she finds them for once," he grumbled in complaint. "She hasn't noticed, but she'd been twitchy for weeks."

Lisa rolled her eyes and nodded in agreement. "No kidding. Wait, Bud, that's parsley, not a weed." Bud let go of the stem he'd been tugging on and started working around it.

————

Rei trotted into Domina less than twenty minutes later, a small part of her satisfied at the improvement in her time. After Bud had been cured of that mage-flu Rei had taken to flat-out running to Gaeus' hollow and back in the mornings before breakfast. Her stamina had improved accordingly although it often earned her strange or incredulous looks from the peddlers and traveling merchants that she'd sometimes pass.

The knife-fighter snorted in amusement. She knew that it was certainly unusual to run approximately fifteen miles in half an hour or less (nineteen if you were visiting Gaeus), but the traders always acted like it was supposed to be impossible. They should know better, living in a world of magic as they all did. Rei dismissed the thought with a wave of her hand, chalking it up to their minds not being open enough.

She gave an absentminded greeting to the Sproutling that wandered the main square and disappeared into the dim interior of Amanda & Barrett's.

To her delight, Elazul was taking up his usual corner by the taproom's cold fireplace. Upon spotting her in return, the Jumi Knight's normally aloof expression cracked into a smile. He appeared to be perfectly fine aside from one or two recently-mended tears in his cloak. Rei pounced on him with a glad cry of, "Elazul!"

Then she bonked him on the head with her fist. "You jerk! Where have you _been_? I've been worried about you!"

He ducked away from another swing, still smiling. "You know," he replied, "it would be nice if for once you could just try a 'Hello, Elazul. It's nice to see you. How are you?' instead of attempting to break my head."

Rei growled and leaped, catching the fleeing Knight by the back of his cloak. The next few moments were a blur of parries, feints, and flailing limbs that wound up with Rei kneeling on Elazul's lower back with her hands pinning his shoulders to the floor. Despite the speed of it all, Elazul had never felt a moment's pang for his precious, fragile core—though he had to admit, lying on top of it like this was rather uncomfortable.

"Now," Rei panted, sounding amused that she'd gotten the upper hand, "you had a question I wanted answered."

Elazul grunted, _heaved_, and successfully managed to enfold Rei in the depths of his loosened cloak in a move that not even he entirely understood. "Gotcha!"

Rei wriggled. Snarled. Let out a grunt of her own when her friend hefted her onto his shoulder to take away all sources of leverage she'd be willing to use. It left her with her head hanging down by his lower back and her feet by his hips, twitching. Complaining "No fair!" in a voice that was strained by the blood rushing merrily to her brain. "I can't get loose unless I wreck your cloak."

"Good." It made her pleased that he sounded so breathless. "If you'd settle down and stop trying to violate my personal space, I'd consider answering your questions instead of just being a wiseass."

"You're always a wiseass."

He grinned. "No, that would be you."

There came an irritated growl from around his belt. "Just you wait, Elazul. I know your little secret now. Pearl told me. Vengeance will be sweet."

The Jumi Knight frowned. "What secret?"

"You'll find out later at a time of my choosing. Now for Salamander's sake, put me down. I'm getting a headache."

Still wearing a puzzled frown Elazul did as he was told and put Rei gently back on her feet. They spent a moment or two untangling the resigned cloak from Rei's limbs, and another moment in companionable silence as Elazul rewrapped the swirling length of fabric back around his throat. Elazul stood looking at her for several more long heartbeats, the fingers of one hand trailing absently over the smooth surface of his core, before he finally spoke again.

"It _is_ good to see you, Rei."

"And you. I was worried about you two, you know. You barely wrote and when you did you never wrote very much. Two sentences are not a letter."

The Knight had the grace to look sheepish. "I'm sorry. I'm not that good at letters. I never know what to say."

Rei gave him an exasperated look. "How about something beyond 'In the White Forest. Weather's lousy'? More than 'Fought another monster today. Still nothing like what I fight with you'? Salamander scorch it, Elazul! My _cactus_ writes longer entries in his diary than you do in a single letter!"

To her surprise, Elazul turned his head away, one hand reaching up to rub at the back of his neck. "I said I'm sorry."

Was he _blushing_? Rei decided that no, her imagination was having fun again, and let her breath out in a sigh. "Ah, well. I shouldn't expect you to be any more of a conversationalist on paper than you are with speech," she told him, a grin tugging at the side of her mouth. Suspicion shone in blue eyes as they glanced at her. "It not like I can usually get you to use more than one-syllable words in normal conversations anyway."

"Hey!" Elazul whipped his head back around, the glare that had been so ready to spring dying away beneath the warmth of one of Rei's patented, mischievous smiles. A fingertip reached up and gently poked him in the forehead to the sound of a chuckle.

"Gotcha." The Knight was left blinking at the unexpected contact, much to Rei's amusement. She tilted her head a little, chuckling again, before tucking her hands behind her back and leaning forward a little. "So. What brings you two back to the backwater that is our pretty Domina?"

Elazul hastily pulled his mind to the new subject, telling it silently to heel and not to keep thinking about how stray bits of sunlight from the nearby window kept making interesting patterns on strands of living gold. His mind was reluctant, to say the least. "I'm still looking for others of my people," he replied. "The last few places we've tried haven't really yielded much." Aside from a few leads that had dead-ended in old stories of a particular jewel-thief, but there was no way he was going to tell Rei about those. "I thought that perhaps there might be news here."

Rei shook her head, mouth pursed thoughtfully. "No. None that I've heard of, anyway." And she would, he knew, because everyone always told her things like that. It was in her nature. "But I'll be happy to help you look."

He was back to being suspicious again. Drat. "But you have apprentices and monsters to take care of."

She'd see if she couldn't nip this one before it even got to a decent bud. There was no way she was going to let him disappear again like that before he'd even been here a week. Instead of saying that out loud, however, she merely raised her eyebrows at him. "'Lazul, I haven't gone anywhere for a month. Not even to Lake Kilma. Well, I did take Bud to visit Olbohn," she added dismissively, "and then there was that whirlwind trip following after Lil' Cactus, but other than that, I've pretty much been keeping close to home since spring started."

Elazul's face was a perfect study of incomprehension. Rei sighed.

"I haven't stayed in one place for so long since before my brother still lived at Haven Tree, 'Lazul. By now everyone in town and my apprentices have to be wondering what's kept my feet nailed down. Or if I've gone crazy. I'm _bored_. Save me." She threw in puppy-dog eyes, too, for good measure. Not even Xan could resist those when she tried hard.

His shoulders slumped in defeat. "All right. Since it doesn't look like I'll be able to keep you away…"

"Damn right!"

He shook his head and began to walk out of the pub. "We'd better go inform your watchdogs that I'm stealing you away for a while."

Rei blinked, then followed after. "Watchdo…? You mean Bud and Lisa?"

"Mostly Bud," Elazul admitted. "Lisa doesn't have as much of a problem with me as he does." He gave her a smile. "There's no way I want to get brained by that frying pan of his just because I pissed him off. You've had him for nearly a year now; I can imagine his fighting skills are pretty sharp."

Rei laughed, pleased at the compliment to her student and her teaching abilities, picked up her speed…and ran straight into Pearl, who'd come running through the door. The two bounced apart with breathless grunts—Rei's hand flashed out and caught the Jumi Guardian's wrist before Pearl toppled onto her rump.

"Ow, geez, sorry, Pearl!"

"Oh, it's you!" The Jumi girl gave her friend a delighted hug. "Sorry for bumping into you like that. I thought Elazul might leave me behind." Pearl smiled ruefully, then looked between the two. "Elazul? Are you going somewhere?"

He hesitated a moment, then nodded. "Yeah."

Pearl drooped. "Should I stay here?"

"…Yeah."

"That's not fair," Pearl told her Knight, sounding upset with him for once.

"You must!" Elazul replied earnestly. "Outside is perilous! Right, Rei?" he added, turning to the knife-fighter for support.

Rei studied the pub thoughtfully for a moment, then answered, "So is this place. There isn't anyone in Domina suited to keep an eye out for trouble."

Elazul blinked, like he hadn't thought of that before. "Perhaps you're right."

Then Rei dropped the other shoe. "So she can stay at my place!"

"Your place." Elazul was giving Rei the kind of look one gave crazy people. "You're serious."

"Absolutely. Bud and Lisa are good at keeping an eye out for trouble that needs exploding, and Pearl can help them out with things like housework. I can never get Bud to dust the corners when it's his turn." Rei beamed at her friends, sincere as could be. Elazul was still staring at her, but Pearl clapped her hands enthusiastically.

"That's a wonderful idea! I had so much fun on your birthday! Your students know so many different things, I hardly even noticed the time pass."

"Then it's settled!" Rei declared, slinging an arm around Pearl's shoulders and leading her out the door. "You'll keep an eye on my apprentices and vice versa, and I'll make sure I bring your grumpy knight home without a scratch." Said grumpy knight was following just behind them, trying to figure out how Rei had turned the tables on both of them so neatly.

———

Later that evening, Elazul and Rei had set up camp for the night and were in the process of making dinner. Meat was never a problem thanks to all the monster ambushes that happened along the roads, but tonight's roast Needlebeak was going to be accompanied by a healthy selection of produce, courtesy of Trent and Rei's seemingly-bottomless knapsack.

Elazul gazed thoughtfully at the fire while Rei used a clean stone and one of her knives to chop vegetables into manageable pieces, the Knight absently breaking up a stick and tossing bits into the flames. "Thank you," he said at last, startling Rei into nearly cutting herself.

"For what?"

"For offering Pearl a chance to stay with your apprentices," Elazul replied. "She is in need of things like a home…a family…"

Rei snorted. "'Laz, make no mistake, you're her family. And home…home isn't always a place. Sometimes it's people. Besides," she added with a bit more of her usual mischief, "I wanted someone else around who could keep Bud from blowing up the workshop. He's gotten loads better, but sometimes he just _has_ to try some new potion idea of his and I usually end up needing to replace the windows."

She handed him a tin plate with his share of the meal arranged on it and plunked herself down on the log that someone had laid by the firepit. This was one of the regular stopping points along the highway, so it wasn't going to be as bare a camp as usual. The two chatted companionably while they ate, Elazul commenting that he could get used to having fresh vegetables for the evening meal. Rei replied back that if he just came around to Haven Tree Cottage a little more often, he'd have some decent supplies for a change.

They bantered like that all through the meal and the clean-up, and then silence fell over the campsite as the sun set and the fire became their only light until the moons rose.

Elazul was in a light trance again as he watched the flames devour the wood he'd scrounged, listening to the sounds of Rei cleaning and sharpening her knives. The soft grind of the whetstone was hypnotic; he didn't even jump when Rei spoke. "Hey, 'Lazul. Pearl reminded me about something I wanted to ask." When he made a noise to acknowledge that he'd heard, she gave him the question. "The morning after my birthday, when you left. You looked…I don't know, distracted, somehow. Why?"

"Oh. That." Elazul smiled slightly. "I had the weirdest dream, is all. Something about eggshells, and spirits dying twice. I was trying to remember the rest of it, but I've forgotten." Which was perfectly true. As far as Elazul knew, the whole conversation with Xan was nothing more than a fragmented dream, thanks to it happening at a sleepless one o' clock in the morning. Slumber had shattered it into random pieces that had been quickly swallowed by forgetfulness.

Xan would be annoyed if he knew. He hated wasting threats.

But Rei's remembered question had unburied one of his own, and one that had been tugging at him for a while. "Rei?"

"Hm?"

"If you don't mind me asking, where did the accent you and your brother have come from? I've never heard anything like it."

In response, Rei smiled and said something in a rolling, liquid tongue that he most certainly didn't recognize. At his blank look, she took pity on him and repeated herself in Common. "I said, 'This is the language of my clan.' It's a long story. About as long as the Mana Tree War, actually."

"I don't see us going anywhere tonight," her friend encouraged, rewarded by a chuckle.

"No, I suppose we're not." Rei made herself more comfortable on the log, leaning back to watch the stars come out. "All right then. Might as well." She took a deep breath, and her voice fell into the smooth roll of a bard's story-rhythm. "Nine centuries ago, the Mana Tree burned to ashes." Her mouth quirked as she realized she'd quoted that strange dream she kept forgetting. "Ten years before that, on the Eastern Continent, the self-styled Dark Lord decided that he would rule his land with no help from the Goddess or the gift of her Mana.

"So he began destroying everything that had to do with either. He started with a clan that had protected the Mana Tree and the way of the Goddess for ages—so long, in fact, that they were known as the Mana Tribe. If they ever had another name, time has forgotten it. He and his soldiers hit the village where the Tribe lived and burned it to the ground, killing every person that he found.

"Many died that day. But a few families were able to escape, and those of the village who were abroad soon heard of the attack and went to ground. The survivors of the Mana Tribe vanished like smoke in the rain. And for ten years the Dark Lord, son of the Lord Granz, hunted them down without mercy as heretics and power-hoarders.

"Now, most of the story that my mother told me when I was little concentrated on two people and the friends they gathered along the way to defeating Dark Lord. One was the son of a Consul of the late Lord Granz, who had vowed his revenge on Dark Lord for the slaying of his parents on the charge of harboring heretics. The other was a girl of the Mana Tribe, someone that Dark Lord was hunting very hard for. And how they fought together and stopped the Mana Tree from being utterly destroyed."

"But the Tree burned to the ground," protested Elazul.

"That doesn't mean it was destroyed," Rei told him gently. "Only that the physical form of it burned. There are worlds and worlds, Elazul. Dark Lord wanted to destroy the Tree utterly. No more Mana, no more Goddess."

"He wanted the world to die?"

"Those who recorded the story didn't think so. He just wanted a world without magic." _Without love_, she added in her own mind, remembering what Pokiehl had told her that day outside her workshop. "But like I said, that was most of what Mother told me, because I was still little and I loved hearing stories about great adventures. If it was real, even if it was old, so much the better. When I grew older, I went hunting for the story in my family's library."

"And?"

Rei smiled at the prompt. "After the attacks began, several of those families fled overseas to the other continents in hopes of finding sanctuary. No Heretic Hunters pursued them, and they became a part of this land's society. But one family, made up of rather adventurous lore-keepers, took up the way of the sword and starting learning how to protect themselves and others. The Tree burned, the girl from the Tribe did…something…to save it, and the Tree left this world. Life went on."

Elazul looked at her with no little surprise. "You don't know what she did?"

"No. I don't know everything. Part of the manuscript had been damaged by moisture and the ink had run. Mother never told the story the same way twice. I don't think she knew either."

"But you have the _worst_ curiosity of anyone I know!" Elazul cried. "You haven't gone chasing after the answer?"

Rei stared at him, taken aback by his vehemence, and then narrowed her eyes in suspicion. Was that a smirk tilting up the corners of his mouth? "You're teasing me," she accused. The Knight chuckled and admitted that he was. The knife-fighter pouted and turned away, Elazul teased her some more, Rei eventually pounced on him and showed him what 'secret' she'd discovered about him.

He was ticklish.

Elazul squirmed, Rei pressed her advantage, the mess devolved into a bare-handed sparring match that made a wreck of their neat campsite. It ended with the two combatants in breathless heaps on their respective bedrolls, having called a truce for the evening.

"So you're from the Mana Tribe?" Elazul asked after he'd gotten his breath back. Rei sat up on her bedroll and crossed her wrists in front of her knees.

"A descendant."

Elazul thought about that for a little. "That makes you, what? A Mana Priestess?"

"Sort of," Rei admitted. "I don't have any real formal training. I know a few prayers and little rituals, but with my immediate family it's always been more like 'just take a swing at it and if it works, it works'. It's the rest of my family that's been in formal service."

Elazul sat up. "You have more family? You never speak of them."

Rei shrugged. "They're all on the Eastern Continent. They went back about a century ago when someone finally got the idea to check for others there and found that the core clans had rebuilt the Tribe where the Mana Sanctuary used to be. Xan and I get letters or gifts sometimes from our cousins. He wants to visit them someday, but there aren't many ships willing to sail the Eastern sea anymore. So he's saving up to build his own and to hire a crew."

"Your brother, I may have mentioned before, is insane."

"It runs in the family," Rei chirped, getting to her feet. "I'll take first watch, okay? I'll wake you for your turn."

Elazul nodded and Rei moved off, beginning one of the many rounds she would walk around their campsite. The Knight, in the meantime, lay back down on his bedroll and gazed blindly up at the stars. There were more of Rei's people. Sweet Goddess, he wasn't sure if he was thankful or frightened at the thought. On one hand, Rei didn't have to suffer the knowledge that she was part of a dwindling race. From the sound of it, her race was actually thriving happily in other parts of Fa'Diel. On the other hand…Elazul kept a groan firmly behind his teeth. Dear Goddess, he wasn't sure if he could handle more than two Venstries in his life. Most days he was lucky if he could keep up with _one_.

———

Rei made a surprised sound as the two ambled up the wide, shallow steps that led to Geo's massive gate, looking at the empty terrace with her eyebrows lifted nearly to her hairline. "What is it?" Elazul asked curiously, following her gaze. He didn't see anything unusual about the place she was staring at. Just stone.

"Oh, nothing important, really," Rei told him, sounding distracted. "It's just that Gilbert's statue isn't here."

"Who's Gilbert?"

"A centaur who was a very bad minstrel. And stupid enough to be in love with Love. He tried hitting on Professor Kathinja of the school here. Three guesses what she thought of that."

Elazul's mouth twisted wryly. "Turned him to stone?"

"Mhm. He's not dead, just stone, so I'm not _too_ worried. It's just odd that he's missing."

Elazul replied with a neutral sound in his throat and the two walked on. Since it was the middle of spring the weather here in the desert was warm, but not yet hot enough to do bad things to Rei's temper. A fact that he was most grateful for. The two had been traveling for about a week now, searching amongst the places they'd stopped for any rumors or stories about magical jewels or people with stones growing from people's sternums.

About halfway here, they'd picked up a crumb of a rumor that hadn't been about either—only that Sandra the jewel hunter was supposedly in the area of the desert city. Rei had gone still for a long moment upon hearing that and immediately had turned their footsteps straight for Geo. Elazul had wondered about the look in Rei's eyes at the mention of the hunter: they'd burned in the depths with a fierce, hungry fire that had shocked him by its heat. Had Rei already lost to the hunter once? More than once?

…Had she seen one of his people die?

The Knight shook his head, hard, shaking that thought loose. Impossible. Rei was too much a creature of emotion to take a death of an innocent without mourning. And if she had, she'd be stone already.

Still. Even before Sandra had been mentioned, there had been a lingering hint of pain that echoed to him on a level below the song of his core. He hadn't managed to get her to talk to him about it yet, but he still had some time before he gave her back to those high-spirited apprentices of hers. He'd see if he couldn't lance that pain before it turned into something poisonous.

Elazul was yanked out of his thoughts by a strange pulsing noise and a burst of shimmering colors just ahead of them. The broad, massive gates of the Palace of Arts loomed before them, with a girl with green hair standing with a round, stained-glass window that hovered in mid-air just in front of the open entrance. The Jumi Knight knew that Rei would likely call the girl's hair true green, or maybe grass green, but all Elazul could think of was that the girl's shoulder-length hair was the same shade as his friend's cheerful eyes…and that the color was a vibrant splash in the round stone glowing just beneath her collarbone.

"Looks like we did it!" the girl told her companion happily, bouncing a little on the balls of her slippered feet. The window-thing rippled in the air as it reprimanded her for her enthusiasm. When she began to protest, it called her 'dirt' in the tones of someone who'd repeated it many times. With her lips curled into a pout, the girl and her companion disappeared in the same manner they'd appeared.

"That girl?" Elazul murmured to himself in surprise, feeling his core sing for a moment. Was she really a Jumi? "No, it couldn't be!"

Rei was frowning a little beside him. "That was Nunuzac," she said to no one, in the same way she'd identify a Malboro in her garden. "But who was the girl with him? I didn't see her at all when I was convincing the students to go back to class."

She'd mentioned that on the way here, catching him up on what he'd missed. He knew perfectly well that she'd glossed over some parts, but right now his mission was first and foremost in his mind. "Then perhaps we should go find out where this Nunuzac has been hiding her. Don't you think so?"

The knife-fighter rubbed absently on a thin scar just above her left arm-cuff, gaze thoughtful and very far away. "Yes," she said at last. "I think we should."

———

"Are you _sure_ you're alright?" Elazul asked for what was probably the dozenth time as they strode through the gates to the Academy of Magic. For a place in the middle of the desert, it certainly had a lot of plant-life growing around the border-wall and within. The broad leaves of some kind of bush nearly hid the two twenty-foot desert-dragon statues rearing on either side of the gate—protectors in case of attack, he had no doubt.

Rei gave him an exasperated look and repeated patiently, "Yes, Elazul. I'm perfectly fine. I was fine a minute ago, and every time you've asked me in the last five minutes! Enough, already!"

"Okay, okay." Elazul raised his hands in surrender. "It's just that I've never seen you go quiet on me before. I didn't think you _had_ 'quiet' in your dictionary. Yeowch!"

Rei took her heel away from his toes and stalked through the gates, giving each statue a cursory nod. The proud set to her shoulders and stiffened spine made him sigh in relief. Whatever mood had taken her at the Palace of Arts, it was definitely gone now. Elazul winced as he resumed walking. Cheering that woman up was a real pain sometimes.

Rei led him through the main entry into the school proper, hair ornaments chiming their own reprimand with every step she took. The music of her motion gentled when a young boy in brown student robes came into view, standing just outside a doorway that led only-Rei-knew-where, and the knife-fighter knelt to bring herself to his height. "Hi, Brownie. How've you been?"

"Hi, Miss Rei!" piped the child, giving her a smile touched with shyness. "It's nice to see you again."

"You, too. Did you forget your homework again?"

"Uh-huh." Brownie looked around her, eyes widening a little at a Jumi man who was trying very hard not to loom. "Who's that?"

Rei didn't even bother to look behind her. "That's just Elazul. Don't mind him, he only _acts_ like he's grumpy. He's really a big softie," she told him in a confidential tone. The boy relaxed, grinning at Elazul, who was now trying very hard not to bristle or splutter protests at the maligning of his reputation. "Hey, do you know a girl about my height with green hair?"

Brownie nodded. "Sure, Miss Rei. That's Esmeralda, an' she's in class right now. She was in a real hurry, too, 'cause Mister Nunuzac kept her later than usual with an experiment."

Rei looked over the child's head towards the door. "Who's teaching today?"

"Miss Kathinja. I don't think she'd mind too much if you went in, so long's you're quiet."

"Great. Thanks, Brownie. Oh, and Bud wants to know if you got his letter."

"Sure did. I'll be writing him back soon, I promise."

Rei ruffled his bangs as she rose, and beckoned Elazul to follow her into what was evidently a classroom. Inside it was bright and airy, not at all like the dim patience of the hall outside, and taken up with sixteen long tables curved like ribs in front of a low platform. The platform held a podium, the wall behind it a chalkboard covered in writing. Most of the backed stools at the tables were filled with children in green or blue robes, all writing fervently on parchment.

On the platform was Kathinja, a book held open in one hand as she taught, who raised an eyebrow as the companions entered. She gave them a nod and returned her attention to her lesson. At the farther row of tables, second row, the green-haired girl sat, listening just as closely as the other students.

"'Scuse us," Rei began when they'd reached the girl's side. "But we were wondering if we could have a word with you?"

Raising her head from her notes, the girl blinked at them, then smiled. "Hello!" Her eyes widened as the stone that gleamed low on her sternum chimed, a ripple of light now familiar to Rei diffusing into the air. A heartbeat later Elazul's core sang in reply, making the Knight's face break into a broad smile.

"Ahh," he breathed. "A Jumi! I am the Lapis Knight, Elazul. I'm on a journey looking for other Jumi."

"Wow!" Up close, it was easy for Rei to examine Esmeralda in greater detail. The aforementioned green hair was kept mostly out of the girl's face by something that could best be described as a tiara, with a tiny green gem adorning the middle of her forehead. She was dressed in a desert-dweller's sleeveless vest, bound around her waist by a sash, and a pair of loose trousers gathered at the ankle. She wore sturdy shoes and a pair of arm-guards similar to Rei's own, except that they ended at the girl's wrists instead of her knuckles. Most of the outfit was in shades of green, but the sash, arm-coverings, and the upper half of the vest were a soft terra cotta shade.

Kathinja cleared her throat. "Rei, Elazul, as much as I appreciate your company, you're disturbing my class. Shoo."

"Erk!" Rei ducked her head and gave the professor an apologetic nod. "Sorry! I'm trying to be quiet, really I am!"

"Out, woman."

Esmeralda giggled. "Meet me in the Library some other time. Maybe on a Gnome or Undine day." Apologizing again to Kathinja, Rei scampered from the classroom with Elazul close behind, waving to Esmeralda as they went.

Once they were back out in the hall, Elazul turned to Rei. "Now what?"

Rei started walking and he fell into step beside her. "I suppose now we wait. I heard there's a café down in the middle of the city that allows overnight guests with no charge." A pause. "Maybe we can go sightseeing, too. The last couple of times I've been through here I've been too distracted." She glanced up, saw his querying look, and explained, "The first time I came here it was to meet with Kathinja and talk about my apprentices. I ended up convincing the students that were boycotting at the time to go back to class. Gilbert got turned to stone, and Kathinja and I had a nice lunch together. The other time was to check if Lil' Cactus was here. He'd gone running off when Bud came down with a mage-bug and I ended up tracking him halfway across the continent and back."

Elazul made a thoughtful noise as he walked. "I hear the local cuisine's pretty good. We should try that, too, while we're here."

Rei let out a huff of laughter and stretched her arms over her head. "I'll be damned!" she said cheerfully. "I go into this trip ready for work, and instead I'm going to end up with most of a vacation!" Elazul's laughter echoed in the hall they left behind for a long minute.

———

Very late that night, Elazul sat on a balcony on the second story of the café 'Sorry, Carl!' In one hand he held a cup of palm wine that he'd been nursing for the past hour. He needed it as an anesthetic to the pain still thrumming along the unexpected, soul-deep link to Rei, which he'd accidentally opened wide this afternoon when he'd gone looking for it. He still wasn't sure where it had come from or why it channeled from Rei to himself, but it was an excellent gauge for the knife-fighter's deeper emotional states. The problem was that her deeper emotions were wound like a Monkey's Paw knot and featured grief, rage, frustration and guilt.

Out of self-preservation, Elazul had done the only thing he could think of. He'd made sure the two were alone that night in a corner of the café and had gotten Rei drunk. He was having trouble believing that it had only taken two cups of palm wine, even though he'd seen it with his own eyes.

Luck had been with him: Rei was a talkative drunk, and the guard had come off her tongue under the influence of the wine.

Out had come spilling the tale of Larc the dragoon and his sadistic, power hungry master. Rei had told him of the meeting, the blackmailing, and the choice she'd been left with. Murder, or the dissolution of her very soul. Of killing people for the sake of desired power, or leaving her apprentices and her brother alone in the world. It wasn't Deathbringer that she'd mourned, nor the two dragons that had fallen to her knives and the axes of Larc. No, there had been bitter satisfaction when she'd described the fight with the Undying Emperor, and she had no reason to mourn two beings who had been revived with the hopefully-permanent death of Drakonis. Though there had been plenty of guilt.

It had been the Windcallers she'd mourned, Akravator's dragoons, who hadn't been granted the same luxury of returning to stolen life. It had been the knowledge that a slain soldier named Thona would once again resume unending service to Deathbringer that left her grieving.

And then grief and guilt had turned to rage as Rei had turned her fury onto the memory of Drakonis. The Crimson Dragon had perverted her skills, her very _purpose_ in life in order to further his own goals. And the bastard had done it with a _smile_. Elazul thought she had the right to be angry, but the café's owner had been a bit miffed at having one of her tables broken by the application of a fist.

The Jumi Knight had placated the Dove quickly and sent her back downstairs with the solemn promise that the damage incurred would be paid for. Fortunately Rei had been too busy ranting at the wall at that point to notice anything or another loop of guilt might have been added.

After that Rei had told him about the fight with Larc, followed by the frustrating hunt for Drakonis himself in his lair in the depths of Underworld. Here was another chord of pain: Rei hadn't been able to save Larc from the hands of his depraved master, stacked with the memory that it had been she and Sierra, Larc's sister, who had struck Larc down.

That part had been lightened only a little by Rei's description of her camp-out in Olbohn's office for a week in order to free the dragoon after everything else had been wrapped up.

Gently, Elazul had asked her why she hadn't said anything to Xan, or even let herself grieve in private. She'd replied that she hadn't wanted to see the hurt in her brother's eyes when she told him that she'd murdered innocents for his sake. It had been obvious to Elazul that telling her apprentices about it had never even crossed her mind. She'd added that she'd managed to get a little of the hurt out when she'd written everything down, but by that time she had been home and there simply _wasn't_ anywhere that she could vent without being witnessed by someone she didn't want watching. And then there had been the planting, and the weeding, and the forging, and…and…

That had been about the point where Rei had finally lost her train of thought, leaving the fighter blinking owlishly into the depths of a cup that had been filled with plain water. She'd drunk it all without noticing. Elazul had refilled her cup and asked, "Why not go back and talk to the dragons? Not Drakonis, of course, but Akravator and Jajara?"

"Why?" she'd asked back. "They probably hate me."

He'd given her an honest smile. "No one could hate you, Rei. I don't think it's possible. Besides, I bet they know that it wasn't your fault. Drakonis didn't give you a choice."

"But he _did_," she'd insisted. "I was just too much of a coward to take it."

The cup of water had spilt across the new table as Elazul had pulled her into his arms, not even remembering how he'd gotten from his own seat to standing behind hers. "You are _not_ a coward, Rei Venstry," he'd growled to the wide green eyes staring up at him. "You chose, wisely I might add, to make sure that the damage was as little as you could make it. Think, you idiot!" Here he had shaken her a little, just to make sure she'd been paying attention. "If you had chosen to die, what would have happened then? Larc would have simply looked for another fighter and there is _no_ guarantee that _that_ one would have the same morals you do. That one might have let Drakonis _win_. Or just as bad, he might have chosen your brother, and given him the same choice to fight or leave your apprentices utterly alone.

"No, Rei. _You made the right choice. You did the right thing. _And if I _ever_ hear you call yourself a coward again and mean it, I'll…I'll…" Elazul had hunted for a suitable threat and had come up at last with, "I'll lock you in the same room with that Escad fellow without any weapons for a week."

Rei had blinked up at him, her mouth opening and closing a few times. He'd reached up with one hand and swiped the ball of his thumb against her cheek, wiping away fresh tears. "Idiot," he'd added quietly. "I will _always_ listen when you need to talk. All you have to do is ask."

"Or you'll make me?" Rei had joked weakly. When Elazul had nodded, she'd buried her face in his shirt and had mumbled, "Thank you."

So now Elazul sat out in the cooling night, firmly ensconced on the balcony's stone railing, his back against a wall still warm from the sun. Rei was asleep in one of the side rooms downstairs, with hopefully enough water and juice in her belly to negate a hangover. The last thing Elazul wanted to deal with was a wildcat with a headache, nausea, and a legitimate bone to pick with him. Getting her drunk was a cheap trick, but since the pain echoing through the soul-link had faded considerably since his scolding, Elazul was going to consider it worth it and deal with the consequences as they came.

The Jumi Knight tilted his cup towards the moonlight pouring from the two full moons dancing around the other five (in varying stages of waxing and waning), and contemplated the wine swirling in it. After a long minute, he poured the rest into a nearby plant and left the cup out for the café's owner to pick up in the morning.

Time to go to sleep. Before he went and did something _really_ stupid. Like kiss Rei goodnight.

———

Esmeralda's mouth dropped open at the sight presented to her a couple of days later in the Academy's Library. The neat, if travel-dusty people who'd spoken with her had been replaced by non-dusty people that wore several bruises and the faint aroma of clean sweat. Elazul's hair was mussed and Rei's pipes stood slightly askew; both of them acted like nothing unusual had happened at all. "Elazul!" the Jumi girl cried. "What happened to _you_?"

"Quiet, dirt!" scolded her teacher, Nunuzac. "This isn't war. You don't have to yell."

Elazul bristled in outrage. There was that word again! "Dirt…?" he repeated quietly.

"Useless dirt!" Nunuzac told him, rippling his image. "Jumi cores were once valued for their magic. The mages vied with one another for these cores, but they were all useless!"

Esmeralda turned to the summoner to protest, "Wait! Not in front of our guests."

Nunuzac rippled again, an event that seemed to hold the eyes of Elazul's companion captive. "The ancient texts talk of their incredible powers, such as great magical forces and powers of healing. This is my sweet little apprentice, but she is just a worthless clod of dirt."

That did it. Elazul stalked forward, fists raised. "Why, you!!" he growled, lashing out. Nunuzac's window was knocked flat, and promptly disappeared. Esmeralda sighed in relief—rather short lived, as it only served to draw the Knight's attention to her. He demanded, "Are you really a Jumi? Why don't you defend yourself?"

Shoulders hunched, the green-haired girl replied, "Because it's the truth. And fewer people will be after my core!"

Elazul made a noise of disgust, pride evidently quite offended at her answer. Some of the prickles in his stance smoothed out, however, when Rei put a gentling hand on his shoulder. "Easy there, Chobin Hood. Just because I kicked your butt in Kristie's arena doesn't mean you can take it out on the lass. You already got to thump Nunuzac, which is more than I ever get to do."

"Still…" grumbled Elazul, but his heart wasn't in it.

Chuckling, the young woman stepped around the taller Knight and stuck out a pink-clad hand. "Nice to meet you again," she said cheerfully. "I'm Rei Venstry, and the cranky fellow behind me, as you might recall, is Elazul."

Esmeralda thought she was inordinately merry for someone who had a respectable bruise beginning to color her jaw, and took the offered hand in a quick, friendly clasp. "And I'm Esmeralda. But what on earth happened to you two?"

Rei shrugged while Elazul turned faintly pink. "Nothing, really. 'Lazul pulled a low trick on me a couple of nights ago, so I paid him back by having him spar with me in the battle arena beneath the Palace of Arts. These bumps are nothing to worry about, really. They'll likely be gone by tomorrow."

Elazul made an irritated sound. "For you, maybe. But your potions don't work as well on me, remember?"

The knife-fighter twisted to look over her shoulder at her friend. "Then you shouldn't get me drunk, now should you?" Elazul's half-hearted mutter only made her grin wider, until a thoughtful expression took its place. "Oh. I never did ask you, 'Lazul. What now? You didn't get around to telling me what it is you do when you find another Jumi. Or, better yet…" Rei turned back to Esmeralda, "I'll ask you. What do you want to do now?"

"There's something I want to ask," was Esmeralda's instant reply. She craned her head around to look at the Jumi Knight standing behind Rei. "In your travels, Elazul, did you see anyone who looks like me?"

Elazul thought for a moment, then shook his head. "No. How about you, Rei?"

In turn, the knife-fighter gave Esmeralda a slow, measuring look, but in the end, she too, shook her head no. "I'm sorry to say I haven't."

"Oh…"

"Looking for someone?" Elazul queried, neither he nor Rei missing the note of grief that had suddenly appeared in the apprentice mage's voice. Esmeralda turned away from them, wrapping her arms around herself.

"Sorry," she apologized softly. "Let me be alone for a while."

Of course, there was no way that Rei was going to do any such thing, but before she'd gotten her feet properly set, Elazul had already put a hand on the nape of her neck and was steering her towards the stairs leading out. But he paused at the base of the stairs to let his core sing a goodbye. Esmeralda's core sang back, muted compared to the silvery chime they'd first heard in the classroom above. "If there is anything we can do, just ask," he told her in a voice that had, until now, been reserved solely for Pearl and the vulnerable creature that Rei was when drunk.

Then, ignoring Rei's squeaks and mutters of protest, he chivvied himself and his companion out of the Academy.

———

The Jumi Knight got Rei to leave Esmeralda alone after that for one whole day, mostly by agreeing to several more sparring matches in Kristie's arena. The knife-fighter's bruise-potion worked well enough that neither of them looked like some insane artist's version of leopards, though Elazul had to move a little more carefully to avoid pulling on sore muscles.

Still, he considered the trouble worth it if it meant that Esmeralda had time to recover her balance and Rei had time to work out the dregs of her unhappiness. He kept reminding himself of that every time the muscles around his left scapula seized, ruining his overhand swing no matter how much he gritted his teeth.

After he'd nearly dropped his sword for the fifth time, Rei stopped their sparring and bullied him into taking off his cloak. "And really, you dummy, it's not like you need that down here. Are you trying to strangle yourself?" When he complied, she spent several minutes poking and prodding his back through his sleeveless shirt and making grumpy noises.

Elazul did his level best not to twitch when she'd hit tender or sensitive spots.

Rei sighed, gave him back his cloak, and called their sparring done for the day. "And for putting up with me," she told him as they emerged into Geo's midday sun, "I promise to see if I can't get those knots to loosen up later."

A massage? Elazul felt himself perking as they walked towards the Academy. When was the last time he'd gotten one of those? His back twinged again, telling him that it wholly favored the idea. He rolled his shoulder, attempting to ease the strain burning under his skin. Rei had said later, so he and his abused body would just have to wait until after they'd seen Esmeralda again.

He walked alongside Rei as they passed through the gates of the Academy, nerves prickling as he felt the protections of this place examine the two of them again. He hadn't liked leaving Esmeralda alone with her grief like they had, but he knew as well as anyone that sometimes that first blow needed to be suffered by yourself. He'd felt that painful strike more than once over the meager two centuries that he'd been alive.

Elazul shook his head to cast off the gloom he'd felt beginning to settle on him; Rei glanced at him sideways, an eyebrow quirked up. "Nothing," he told her in answer of the unspoken question. "Just thinking too hard." And he'd been spending too much time with her. The faint smirk she wore now said 'I wondered what that burning smell was' clear as day to his eyes. He growled wordlessly and made a half-hearted swipe in her direction that was effortlessly dodged.

The two made faces at each other until they reached the door to the classroom they'd found Esmeralda in last time. It was two meek adults who slipped past an ever-vigilant Brownie inside, to find a woman standing at the front, wrapped head-to-to in musty-smelling bandages and long robes. This, then, must be the bizarre Professor Thesesis. Pale eyes studied them for a moment from amidst a fall of hip-length, nearly-white hair. The light slid around the edge of the doctor's reflector she wore as Thesesis gave them a faint nod and continued speaking in a soft, dry voice.

Feeling tiny shivers climb up their spines, Elazul and Rei headed for Esmeralda, seated in the same place as before and wearing a lonely frown. Rei slid onto the empty stool next to her and gave the Jumi girl a bright smile, idly kicking her feet as Elazul came to stand beside Esmeralda. "You looked troubled…" he offered hesitantly, the usual greeting of core-to-core muted. "We wanted to come see if you were alright."

The green-haired girl gave them both an unsteady smile and nodded. "Yes…And I have a favor I wanted to ask," she added, turning her head towards Rei, "of this person."

"Okay," was Rei's predictable, immediate response. Elazul rolled his eyes a little, but agreed readily enough when he and his companion were told to come back on a Gnome or Undine day. He started to leave, then paused, surprised when he didn't hear Rei's light footsteps echoing his.

She was still seated on the stool, chin propped in her hands, listening with all the signs of total attention to the lesson in progress. Thesesis was apparently doing a lecture on natural objects used in magic and it took a careful listener to catch every word she spoke.

Elazul looked towards the ceiling, silently appealing to the Goddess and the Flammies for patience, then gave the faintest chink of his core as farewell and left. Rei spotted him leaving as he crossed her line of sight and gave him a sheepish grin, shrugging her shoulders in apology. 'Sorry,' her body language told him, 'can't help it'.

He replied with a quick wave and a tilt of his wrist. 'Don't worry about it. I'll be in the café.' She nodded to show she understood, and immediately went back to the lesson, eventually begging a sheet of parchment and a quill from Esmeralda to take notes.

———

Two days later the companions went to meet their new friend in the lower level of the Academy Library, this time as neat and tidy as two life-long fighters could be. Nunuzac was there as well, obviously to keep an eye on his student as she spoke to the foreigners. Thesesis was also there, leaning over a roiling cauldron by one of the main windows on the upper level. She merely gave Elazul a glance and Rei a brief nod before she went back to whatever experiment that she had cooking.

"Thank you so much for coming!" Esmeralda told the pair brightly when they came to a stop in front of her.

Rei lifted a shoulder in a lopsided shrug. "You told us to. Besides," here she let her mouth curve into her accustomed mischievous grin, "you said you had a favor to ask, no?"

"So what can we do for you?" Elazul added, tilting his head to one side, a mannerism that he'd picked up from Rei during their trip here. "Or, rather, what can Rei do for you?"

Esmeralda gestured them to take a couple of the random chairs that were scattered around the room, circling desks whose woods were dark with age. Elazul took a chair but Rei perched on the edge of the nearest table, head cocked in a patient, listening fashion. "First, let me explain," the emerald Jumi girl said seriously. "I ran away from the Jumi city and was taken in by the Academy."

Elazul raised a hand to pause her, his expression thoughtful. "Why did the Jumi city die out, anyway?" he asked. "I was away at the time with Pearl, and by the time we got back everyone was gone."

"Florina, the only one who could heal, was kidnapped." Rei nodded at Esmeralda's mention of the Jumi's Clarius. She remembered Rubens telling her about Florina, back when that whole fiasco with the dragons had only just started. Elazul went quiet again, murmuring the words 'healing' and 'Florina' as though tasting the memories they brought to mind.

Esmeralda waved a hand, chasing away the smoke of the past. "It was too risky to stay together in the Jumi city because the power of healing was no more. In the chaos I was torn from my sisters…"

Rei leaned forward, the reason for her new friend's breakdown the other day growing clear. Elazul merely jumped to the wrong conclusions and sent a dark look at the hovering sorcerer. "So that Nunu-magic-guy…He's been interfering, eh?"

That had his companion dissolve into giggles while Nunuzac _harrumph_ed and Esmeralda waved her hands again. "No, no, it isn't like that at all!" she protested. "Mr. Nunuzac has taken me in. In exchange for his instruction in magic...I promised that I would stay until a knight appeared."

In the background, Rei was still giggling and sending highly amused glances at a certain summoner-cum-stained-glass-window. "Nunu-magic-guy…!" If summoning circles could glare, Nunuzac would have been peeling paint at a hundred paces.

"So I should be your Knight, eh?" Elazul asked, able to ignore Rei with the ease of practice.

Esmeralda immediately shook her head. "No, Elazul. You already have a Guardian, right? Mr. Nunuzac says that's two-timing." (Rei clapped a hand over her mouth to muffle her laughter, not wanting to disturb the students trying to learn around them.)

Nunuzac's glare transferred to a bemused Elazul, who was blinking at the Jumi girl. "But knights and guardians aren't lovers or anything."

Esmeralda's teacher gruffly cleared his throat somewhere beyond the glass of his prison. "The most one can do is protect himself and one other. Stop showing off, Jumi boy."

"You underestimate me," Elazul replied stiffly, before turning to Rei and poking her in the side. "Cut that out, already. I don't know what you find so funny. Be serious for a change, would you?"

Rei got her merriment under control with an effort and took several deep breaths, looking everywhere but directly at Nunuzac. "Right, sorry. Please continue."

Her friend shook his head and looked towards the ceiling for patience before returning his gaze to Esmeralda. "So what now?"

To their surprise, the girl that had been so outgoing before suddenly turned shy. "Well…Mr. Nunuzac said I should ask Rei."

Colors rippled as Nunuzac showed his amusement at Rei's open-mouthed shock. "Of course! I do like those exotic hair-pipes!"

Elazul was grinning too, the traitor, as he reached over and gently shut Rei's mouth for her. "Well? What do you say, wildcat?"

Rei blinked. Blinked again. Looked from a hopeful Esmeralda to a grinning Elazul to Nunuzac, radiating approval, and back again. Scratched at the nape of neck and knew she was turning bright red. "I…well…Okay?"

"Congratulations," Elazul said to Esmeralda. "This is the second time I've seen her caught speechless in a year. The first time, Pearl and I had to give her dusk crystals for her birthday." Esmeralda giggled, throwing her arms around Rei's neck in a hug.

"Thanks, Rei!"

Still grinning, Elazul patted the knife-fighter on the head and told her, "I'll head for that jewelry shop." They'd talked about it as one of the places they'd wanted to sightsee at. There were a few stories about it in the neighboring areas that said some stunning pieces had been there at one point or another, and everyone agreed that the shop owner always had excellent tastes in merchandise. "Call me if you need me. I hope we can find her sisters."

Rei and Esmeralda watched him go, and then the knife-fighter turned to the spell-caster. "I guess we should get started. What do your sisters look like?"

The smile that Esmeralda gave her was…odd, the knife-fighter thought, as her new friend simply shrugged and replied, "Don't worry. My sisters will soon be drawn to my core. We'll see them soon."

Puzzled, Rei asked, "But if they're easy enough to bring here, then why did you wait? It's not like Geo is really dangerous, is it?"

Green hair fluttered as the Jumi girl shook her head. "It's not dangerous, really…but…you'll find out soon."

Muscles rolled when Rei stood and stretched, nodding to her…Guardian. Wow, that was going to take some getting used to. But it felt just like the day that she'd taken Bud and Lisa into her care, so Rei figured it wouldn't take long at all. "All right, then. Last question: where should we start?"

"The jewelry shop."

———

Elazul had barely gotten his eyes accustomed to the dim, cool interior of the jewelry shop 'Wendel' when Esmeralda darted in, followed closely by a bemused Rei. It was obvious that the knife-fighter had no idea why they'd come here, but her eyes lit up all the same at the sight of the youth behind the counter. "Alex!"

"Hello again, miss," he replied, before he gave Esmeralda a light frown and chided, "Don't run inside the store."

"I'm sorry," panted the Jumi girl, "I'm in a hurry. Do you have anything that looks like my core?"

Rei's grin froze, then melted into a look of pure dismay as Elazul spoke. "Wait! So your sisters are…"

A sad nod. "Only their cores are left. They were taken by Deathbringer's army."

Only Elazul was close enough to Rei to hear her mutter, "I _knew_ I didn't kill that bastard hard enough," under her breath. Or at least, he thought he was, until he noticed Alex giving his friend a surprised, measuring look.

Bringing his attention back to the other of his race, Elazul ventured, "Oh, so you're looking for the mementoes of your sisters."

"No," Esmeralda replied firmly. "There might be some magic left in their cores. If I had some tears of healing, I could bring them back!"

"The only one of us who can shed tears is Florina," Elazul reminded her, not unkindly, "and she isn't with us. Isn't your safety more important? Let me handle it and get back to class."

Esmeralda pointed at his waist, where his scimitar hung from his sash. "What's that sword? If you're a knight, don't talk like a sissy!"

At the same time, Rei grumbled, "Thanks for the vote of confidence there, 'Lazul. Means a lot to me." Her friend gave her an apologetic shrug, acknowledging the truth in them, before he shook his head at Esmeralda and commented on how different she was from Pearl.

Alex, who'd been making attempts to add to the conversation, gratefully seized the moment of pause. "Um, excuse me. We don't deal with Jumi cores here."

Esmeralda looked at the youth with no little surprise. "Well, how rare! A courteous shopkeeper! And here I thought jewelry shops were the same as morgues." Turning to Rei, the Jumi girl said, "Alright, let's go to the next one." And jogged out.

Rei cast one longing look at the displays of necklaces, bracelets, and myriads of polished stones, then chased off after Esmeralda, calling, "Hey! Wait up! Bye, 'Lazul! Bye, Alex!"

Elazul and Alex were left where they stood, blinking after the two young women. The shopkeeper pushed his glasses back up his nose and commented to no one in particular, "I didn't know there were Jumi in this city…"

———

Rei caught up to Esmeralda just outside 'Wendel' and followed the determined mage-in-training to the café that had housed fighter and Knight for the past few days. It occurred to Rei that she might, finally, have met her match in terms of boundless energy. What a strange thought.

The Dove in charge of 'Sorry, Carl!' looked up from her ledger and frowned when the two girls ran up to her place behind the register. "Step up to the counter, please," she instructed them. "You, miss, should know that by now," she added as an aside to Rei, who shrugged in reply.

Esmeralda ignored the polite command and asked, "Say, do you have anything like this?" Her core flashed once, a brief, bright note, before it returned to being a warmly-lit green stone.

Rei noted that the Dove paled, which was a hell of a trick for someone whose skin was porcelain. "Who…who the heck are you?" demanded the café-owner shakily, staring at Esmeralda in shock.

"Do you?" repeated Rei's friend.

"No!" half-shouted the Dove. "Of course not!"

Esmeralda apologized, saying that it had just been a hunch, and beckoned Rei to follow her back outside. When their footsteps had faded, the Dove looked around to see who might be watching, and hopped ungracefully to the large potted plant that sat in front of the wide, open stairs leading to the second floor.

Outside, Rei got Esmeralda to slow down at last as they walked up the sun-glazed road towards the edge of the business district. "That Dove really isn't a good liar," was Rei's mild comment after a few moments of silence.

Esmeralda nodded. "I know. We'll just have to go back there later."

Rei made a thoughtful noise, then shaded her eyes with one hand. The other rested easily on the hilt of one of her knives, following the sway of Rei's hips in an old, well-used habit. "All right. Where else do we go?"

Esmeralda flashed her Knight a grin. "Just follow me!"

"Like I haven't—ack! Hey! Wait up! Don't make me run when it's hot!"

———

Elazul watched Rei flop down across from him with little of her normal style and attack the food he'd ordered for both of them. It was already dark outside, and Rei's hair was damp from a recent washing. She and Esmeralda had visited the public baths before they'd parted ways, he'd wager, since his fellow Jumi was nowhere in evidence.

"You look like you've had a long day," he observed, voice mild as he took a sip from his cup.

Rei groaned, leaning backwards and stretching until her companion heard several vertebrae pop. "Oh, spirits, you have no idea!" she said fervently. "Trying to keep up with 'Melda was as hard as anything I've done!"

Elazul raised an eyebrow. "You've given her a nickname already?"

Rei's grin was decidedly goofy when she told him, "Well, I'm her Knight, yeah? Who else would get to make up a nickname for her? Nunu-dummy's too distant to do something silly like that."

Figuring that he wouldn't even bother trying to wrap his head around the thoughts that _that_ comment brought up, Elazul took another bite of his own dinner and chewed for a moment, considering. After he'd swallowed, he asked, "How many of her sisters' cores have you found?"

Rei shifted unhappily. "Well, only one for sure, so far," she admitted, then leaned forward in sudden urgency. "Elazul, listen. We found another Jumi down in the basement of Kristie's Palace. I don't know _how_ we managed to miss her when we went down to the arena to spar. Esmeralda called her 'Diana'."

No longer relaxed, Elazul leaned in closer until their faces were only inches apart. "_Diana_? Here?"

Rei nodded, green eyes holding none of their usual sparkle. "It gets worse, Elazul. Diana actually _told_ the jewel hunter to come and steal her core! She thinks that since she'd the head of your race now that Florina isn't with you, that Sandra might be content and leave the rest of the Jumi alone."

Mind reeling, Elazul sat back and stared at his friend, aware by the chill on his skin that all the warmth had drained from his face. "But that…that's _insane_," he said hoarsely. "The hunter's crazy, she doesn't care about the Jumi or she wouldn't steal our cores!"

"I know!" Rei nodded several times in fervent agreement. "Esmeralda and I tried arguing with her, but the woman's as stubborn as her signature stone. I thought that maybe you should try talking to her tomorrow. I'd say tonight, but the Palace is closed to the public."

Trembling fingers ran through long, dark green hair in a nervous gesture Elazul had thought he'd gotten rid of. Thought of his home always made him feel like the inexperienced Knight he really was compared to some of the Jumi he'd known; and all he could think of when Diana came to mind was how nervous the Lucidia Guardian had always made him, the few times their paths had crossed.

"I'll see what I can do," he said at last, wrapping his hands around his cup to keep them from shaking any harder. All this time he'd searched for others, only to find not one, but _two_ Guardians with no Knight to protect them in this huge city. And that damned jewel hunter was probably already on her way. Damn it, damn it, _damn it_! "Where's Esmeralda?"

"She went with Nunuzac back to the Academy for the night. I'm heading over there in a bit; she told me that of course she could spare a bunk for her Knight. Neither Nunuzac or I will be letting her out of our sight until this is over with. Since Pearl's well clear of the giant mess we've found ourselves in, I suggested that Nunuzac find you a bed somewhere in the Academy, just in case. It's open if you want to skip sleeping here tonight."

Elazul gave his friend a decisive nod. "I'm with you, always."

Rei stretched her hand out and they gripped each other's wrist tight for a moment. Rei's grin was shaky, but gaining confidence. "Right. Always and ever. We'll hit that hunter so hard her head will be spinning for _years_."

And in her thoughts Rei vowed, _This time, I won't fail. I won't let Sandra hurt another one of my friends. Never again._

And if she'd been listening, that part of her mind that had Xan's voice would have warned her, 'Never swear on never'.

———

Rei poked her head into the office of Mephianse, the headmaster of the Academy. Esmeralda was already inside, rummaging through one of his cabinets with clear intent. It was Dryad day, the one day a week when Mephianse himself would teach classes, and thus the only day where Rei and Esmeralda could double-check for the draw of a Jumi core. "Are you _sure_ this was a good idea?" Rei asked uncertainly. The whole room reeked of Mana and spells, and she fully expected Mephianse to come charging in here demanding to know why they were raiding his office.

In response, Esmeralda held up a round emerald the size of her palm that made a tiny 'chink' noise when the sunlight hit it. Triumph was replaced a moment later by doubt as Rei's Guardian turned towards her. "Does this make me a thief?" she asked in a tiny voice.

Rei blinked, then shook her head. "Of course not! She's your sister. Even the Headmaster would have to agree that under the Laws of Contagion and Association her core is still a part of you."

Esmeralda beamed. "You're a wonderful Knight." She turned slightly pink and admitted, "I…I always wanted to be able to say that. Thanks!"

Her Knight grinned back. "No thanks necessary. Now put your sister's core away and let's get going."

"Right!"

The two slipped back out into the sunlight. Despite her assurances to Esmeralda, Rei didn't breathe easy until they were past the guardian dragon statues and out on the main street of Geo. Mephianse would likely not have been pleased to find one of the students and one of the people that had given him so much trouble in the desert poking their noses through his drawers. Rei was quite pleased that nothing at all had happened aside from their finding one of the missing cores.

Esmeralda held a hand protectively over the pouch where the two cores of her sisters that they'd found so far were kept. It had been firmly belted to her waist and woe to any pickpocket that tried to go after it. "All right," she said after they'd walked back to the marketplace. "There was the warehouse, the headmaster's office…And one more place where the cores respond." Her core sang. "I'll bet it's in that coffee shop! Let's go see!"

"After you," Rei said, making a sweeping gesture. Esmeralda giggled and took off at a jog; Rei dropped into an easy lope at her heels, wondering if this odd protective feeling was what everyone who followed _her_ around felt.

They went into 'Sorry, Carl!' together. Rei waited by the counter as her friend stood in the middle of the room and let her core ring out. "I knew it was here!" cried the Jumi girl, and raced over to the potted plant in front of the stairs.

"Blimey!" shouted the owner angrily, glaring at Esmeralda's back. "Wot's 'at yore doing!.? You bloody well stop that!"

Fingers smudged with potting soil, Emseralda's hand emerged from amidst the broad leaves of the plant with a palm-sized green stone caught in her grasp. "It's here!" she caroled to Rei.

"That's my emerald!" the Dove shouted angrily, the water every Dove carried in their pitcher-like bodies hissing and bubbling.

"This is my sister," corrected Esmeralda firmly, "and I want her back!"

"Wot's 'at gibberish yore sayin'?" the Dove demanded. "You must be out of yore bloody 'ead!"

Esmeralda clutched her sister's core to her chest, an expression of hurt shining in deep green eyes. "Why, you sure say mean things for a Dove!" She looked pleadingly to Rei. "Come on! You're my Knight! Fight for me!"

All amusement that Rei had been feeling disappeared, and she gave her friend a disapproving look. "I don't fight people who can't fight back," she said quietly. "And you shouldn't ask me to."

The Dove, who'd gone still behind her counter, nodded fervently. _She_ certainly didn't want to go against anyone who could break a solid oak table in one hit, no sirree! "You mustn't strike a lady!" the owner scolded. "'S truth! Use yore noggin for once! If you got something to say, I'm listenin'!"

Beneath the disapproval of both Knight and Dove, Esmeralda wilted, thoroughly abashed. "You're right…I'm sorry." Rei gave her forgiveness instantly in the shape of a nod and a smile. Esmeralda brightened and turned back to the proprietor. "It's a long story. Will you hear me out?"

"'Course!" agreed the Dove, who had every intention of tossing both of them out of her café on their rumps once the green-haired girl was done talking. Of course, that was _before_ Esmeralda opened her mouth and started talking. Rei merely settled back against a wall and closed her ears to it. She knew this story already, and it was getting harder and harder to hear it with every passing day.

Their host didn't have Rei's experience, however, and was bawling by the time Esmeralda finished her tale of woe. Literally, twin little fountains of tea-water were pouring out of the sobbing Dove. "Blimey! Bein' killed for yore cores? That's terrible!"

"They're not exactly dead," Esmeralda told her. "Ages ago, the Jumi healed their wounds with tears. So I think I could revive them if only I had some tears of healing."

The Dove sobbed, "If you need tears, then take mine! Take all you want! They're just tea-water, but they're good and pure. You can take them!"

"Regular tears won't do," the green-haired girl replied gently. "They have to be Jumi tears."

Wiping her eyes—Rei winced at the faint screech of ceramic on ceramic—the owner of the café asked, "Can't you cry, then?"

Jumi girl and knife-fighter shook their heads. "Nope. Jumi tears are shards of life. That's why tears can heal a Jumi. Ages ago, the Jumi put life into their tears and shared them freely. But one day, we couldn't cry anymore...My teacher says that it might be a survival instinct," Esmeralda said, voice soft.

The Dove told her earnestly, starting to cry again, "I don't rightly understand, but you really need 'elp! Go on, take it."

"Thank you," Esmeralda said, never having intended to do otherwise. And with that, the two young women dashed out of the café.

After a moment, the Dove came to a realization. "Uh-oh! Me water!"

Meanwhile, high above the café, on one of the gilded domes that decorated the higher-class buildings, a woman with orange flowers in her hair watched everything from her perch. "Looks like the Lucky Clover is whole again," purred Sandra, watching a green head and a golden one emerge back out into the sunlight.

Rei was giving her friend a congratulatory hug when there came a familiar sound of heavy cardstock hitting the ground from just ahead of them. Esmeralda slipped out of Rei's hold and ran to where a cream-colored piece of paper sat amidst a vanishing puff of dust. She scooped it up and read it, then turned her pale face to the knife-fighter. "It's a note," she said, trembling. "It says 'The Lucky Clover will be mine.' What are we going to do?"

"You're going to _stay next to me_, is the first thing!" Rei told her firmly, stretching out a hand to catch a fabric-clad wrist. But Esmeralda backed away, shaking her head.

"No, I'll just be a burden to you. I'll head back to the Academy."

"_NO!_ Esmeralda, _listen to me_!" Rei felt her stomach drop as her Guardian dashed off up the road back to the Academy. "DAMN IT!" Fear lent her feet wings as the knife-fighter bolted into the nearby jewelry shop where Elazul was waiting for her and the Jumi girl.

He looked up when she sprinted in, wild-eyed and shaking. "What? What's wrong? Where's Esmeralda?" he asked her, catching her by the shoulders. "Rei, breathe."

Rei clutched the front of his shirt and began hauling him bodily with her, completely ignoring Alex behind the counter. "There was a note from the jewel hunter! I tried to get her to stay with me and the little idiot ran for the Academy!"

"What!.?" Elazul didn't need any more information than that. He picked up his pace, Rei keeping up, until they were sprinting up the road towards the mage-school. "We should find Esmeralda, now!"

His friend needed no encouragement. Instead, she picked up her speed so that her hair was flying from the wind of her passage, Elazul's a gleaming banner of war from his place beside her. But even with their speed, by the time they reached the gates of Geo's Academy for Magecraft there was already a certain mouse-man steaming at the ears in his frustration.

"We were too late!" cried Inspector Boyd. "Esmeralda's gone! She's been kidnapped by the jewel hunter!"

Rei's heart froze. She barely heard Elazul's shout of her needing to find Esmeralda before she was already turned around and bolting back the way they'd come. If she'd asked her companion why _she_ was the one who was expected to find the missing Jumi girl, Elazul's reply would have been simple. 'Because you always do.' She was his people's best hope.

Elazul barely kept up as Rei practically flew down the main street of Geo, her instincts yelling at her to go to the Palace of Arts. They blew through the open gates and past Hamson and Skippy out in the front courtyard, past Kristie and Mr. Sotherbee who wordlessly pointed towards the stairs that led down to the warehouse.

Rei came close to tripping headlong down the stairs in relief at the sight of Esmeralda standing in front of Diana on her pedestal. But that relief was short lived. With a heartbroken exclamation of, "No! That's terrible!" the green-haired girl vanished in the spiral of light that was a transportation spell.

"Esmeralda!" called Diana.

Rei skidded to a halt in front of the diamond Jumi and the only thing that kept her from face-planting at her sudden stop was the firm grip Elazul had on the back of her outfit. He was staring wide-eyed up at the Jumi woman in awe. It wasn't that he hadn't believed Rei, but being told and seeing something for yourself would always be worlds apart in terms of heart-wrenches.

"Incredible," he breathed. "It really is you."

"Yes." Diana's voice was sad, brimming with her long years and a dozen unnamed regrets. "I was the one once called Diana, in the Jumi city. Young Jumi Knight, can you save her?"

"Of course!" declared Elazul, never noticing that Diana's soft brown gaze was on coldly blazing emeralds. Rei nodded once.

Diana gave them a tiny smile. "Then I leave it to you."

Rei's war-cry echoed in the cluttered space for long moments after Diana's teleport spell swallowed her and Elazul.

————

Rei and Elazul found themselves in the well-lit battle arena that they had spent most of their long afternoons in Geo in—and with them was a honey-colored Jewel Beast that hissed angrily at them the moment their feet had steadied.

Rei didn't even wait for Elazul. Her knives spun out into golden arcs and were flung with devastating accuracy right into the thing's head. Her hair-pipes sang an angry melody when the knife-fighter sprinted for it, leaping and planting both feet into the Beast's neck as she ripped her knives back out.

For once, Elazul didn't bother to berate his friend for her crazy stunts. He was right behind her, swinging his blade to hack out pieces of their enemy's body. No special attacks were used—they didn't need to be. Sandra had underestimated how much either warrior had grown in strength since the last time she'd challenged them, and the Jewel Beast was no more powerful than the other one that Rei had fought.

Between Rei's temper and raging fear and Elazul's grim determination that he would not lose another of his people, the two fighters destroyed the Jewel Beast set against them in less than a minute. And without a word about it, Rei and Elazul sprinted for the door gaping open on the far side of the arena. The one that had always been closed until now.

Rei and Elazul raced down the stairs that were revealed by the shattered door into another room sunk into the floor. _An arena below an arena?_ Rei wondered distantly in the fraction of her that was calm. This room was dimmer than the other, but what really concerned Rei and Elazul were the forms of Sandra and Esmeralda near the middle of the open space.

Esmeralda was crouched down, crying without tears as she looked up at the expressionless Sandra. "I can't shed tears," the green-haired Jumi girl sobbed, sounding—not concerned for her safety or fearful, but grief-stricken—"Not for myself…not even for my sisters!"

Sandra looked over as the furious, battle-sore fighters ran into the open, expression changing not even by a hair. "Looks like you're too late," she said calmly.

Then she reached down and tore the green stone from Esmeralda's chest.

Rei let out an enraged, despairing howl, lunging for Sandra just a second too slow to catch the woman as she escaped on that thrice-damned grappling hook-and-rope. Esmeralda disappeared in a shower of light fragments that glittered on the ground for a heartbeat before fading into nothing.

Elazul swore, eyes on where Esmeralda had vanished, and then turned to look at Rei.

The knife-fighter stood with her knives clenched in her hands so hard that her knuckles were white and blood trickled from where her nails had bitten into her palms. Her head was cranked back, glaring at where Sandra had disappeared into the roof's shadows and the beams mostly-hidden in the darkness. Her lips were peeled back into a feral, noiseless snarl, torchlight glittering in her eyes.

Elazul took a step back before he could stop himself. He stood a yard or two away from the door, staring at the wild thing his friend had become. The look she wore frightened him, as only losing Pearl frightened him. _Dragons must wear a look like that when someone raids their nests,_ he thought to himself.

And for the first time, Elazul feared that Rei would do worse things than cry in the name of their friendship, if it meant that he and Pearl kept on breathing.

Rei took a long, deep breath and then howled at the ceiling, putting all of her rage, her grief, and her determination into the sound, then whirled on her heel and strode past him with her head held high. Elazul followed after Rei, letting her lead the way back up to the warehouse-basement to where Diana glittered in her false-stone beauty.

The Jumi woman gazed at them from her pedestal, looking first at the grim, silent Rei, then quiet, sorrowing Elazul. Her voice was empty, neutral when she spoke, wary of the dangerous gleam in narrowed green eyes. "I take it that things went badly."

"You might say that," snarled the knife-fighter, pacing like a caged tiger around Elazul—there wasn't room to pace around anything else, not when he stood on the only bit of open floorspace.

"I'm sorry," the Lazuli Knight said to Diana, feeling his spirit be nearly crushed under the weight of his failure. "We…we tried…"

"I knew it would happen…" Diana sighed. "I believe that the jewel hunter wants to have revenge on all the Jumi."

"Revenge?" Elazul caught Rei as she passed him for the dozenth time, wrapping her into a one-armed hug and letting her dig her nails into the gemstone glove he wore as armor. "What for? What could we _possibly_ have done to her to deserve this?"

"Bring your Guardian here with you," commanded Diana, sounding for the first time like the woman she must have been when Rubens had fallen in love with her. "I shall tell you then. I give you this as proof of my promise."

Rei stared in incomprehension at the small bar of Granz steel being offered to her. She stared at it so long that Elazul at last was the one to accept it and stow it away in his belt pouch. Rei kept staring blindly at nothing; the man holding her felt a distant note of surprise that whatever she was feeling wasn't blasting down their connection.

Diana gave them another small smile and bowed her head. "Allow me to return you to your Guardian."

———

Bud and Lisa stared. Their teacher and the Jumi Knight had popped out of thin air onto the front path while the twins had been drawing water from the well for tonight's supper. Both fighters wore a haunted look around their eyes and their clothes and hair were in disarray. Most worrisome was the utter silence in which the two adults walked into the house together, Rei's hand firmly caught by Elazul's and white-knuckled with the strength of their shared grip.

Inside the cottage, Pearl had fallen into a drowse while she waited for the twins to tell her what they wanted her help with in making. She gave the two fighters a half-awake smile as they approached her, happy now that her world was back together.

Elazul stopped, and Rei had to stop with him since he was still holding her hand. "I must tell her about Esmeralda and Diana…" he murmured to Rei. The knife-fighter had no time to respond before Pearl spoke, calling them over in tones of sleepy content. The Jumi man gave a faint sigh of regret and decided that he wouldn't tell her just now, not when she looked so happy.

Rei tugged her hand free and plopped down in one of the other chairs, folding her arms and resting her chin on them in echo of Pearl. "I'm getting so tired of it, Elazul," she said softly. "I don't know how much more of this I can take."

"What happened?" Bud demanded, keeping his voice down as he and Lisa came in with buckets of water. "What did you do, Lazuli?" Rei glared at him; the Elven youth gulped and fell silent.

Elazul had no real emotional connection to the twins. He thought they should know the truth, and Rei was too heartsore to stop him when he answered the first of Bud's harsh-voiced questions. But for Pearl's sake he drew the twins into the library to talk to them. Pearl had dropped into a full nap and he didn't want to wake her with the sad news.

Leaning against the desk, Elazul looked into maturing faces and told them. "One of my people died today. The jewel hunter took her core and those of the sisters Esmeralda lost during the war. Sandra called them 'the Lucky Clover.' Some luck," he added bitterly. "Rei and I tried to stop it from happening, but Sandra was always at least one damn step ahead of us."

The twins stared at him. Then looked at each other as realization dawned. "The other jewels," breathed Lisa in growing distress. Bud nodded in agreement and the two quickly headed back out into the main part of the house, leaving Elazul blinking.

Other…jewels? Did that mean what he thought it meant? Oh, please Goddess, don't let it mean what he thought it meant.

Elazul hurried after them.

————


	22. Cosmo

**Starlight's Delight**: Urm. Good point with Gilbert. Plot hole, must fix. Sorry this update took so long; someone was kind enough to send in an engraved writer's block for an early birthday present, so the going's been slow. And yeah, Sandra frustrates the bejeezus out of me every time I play that arc. As for Lil' Cactus, once again I must thank that wonderful strategy guide.

**Tiamat42**: _—suspicious look—_ You've been drinking shipping juice again, haven't you? Anyway, to go on to your second review, the 'soul-link' is indeed part of the Venstry family _geas_. It's just that Elazul calls it a soul-link while Xan tends to call it a bond or soul-bond. It's that link between a Venstry and others that helps to keep their spirits going. Xan just neglected to tell Elazul about a few of the other side-effects. And no, the twins were merely remembering the other jewels that Rei has mentioned that a certain thief has swiped out from under her nose.

Meerf: Sister, actually, but close enough. Thank you for getting the Sword of Mana reference! Rei's writer got tired of the minutiae you're required to finish if you don't want to be confused by the end of the game. I got about halfway, then quit. I'm lazy, oh well. But that's why Rei and her family don't know exactly what happened at the end of that battle.

Vrtra: Thanks!

For the long wait, and 'cause my birthday's almost here, I'm posting two chapters. (Yes, again. Insert cheers here, yes?) After that, though, it's going back to singles while I try to figure out who sent me this bloody big engraved Writer's Block and hit them with it.

————

Xan came home a few days after that. He didn't bother knocking when he arrived, either. Simply walked in, grabbed Rei by her hand and made her come with him to their practice area. Pearl could only watch, wide-eyed, as the unsmiling man pulled an equally-serious woman out the door without a word. Bud and Lisa spotted them and began to call a greeting, only to fall silent when they saw the way the two looked.

Elazul came back to the cottage a little more than an hour after Rei's brother to find Pearl and the children gathered in silence around the dining room table. "What's wrong?" he demanded, hackles rising immediately. "Where's Rei?"

"Out back," Lisa told him, staring up at the Knight with eyes gone wide. "I think they were fighting. There were some explosions and some yelling…but it's been quiet for almost ten minutes now."

Elazul seized on the first plural. " 'They'? Who's 'they'?"

Pearl kept her gaze firmly on the steam curling from the spout of the teapot in front of her. "Xan and Rei. He looked…so grim…Ah, Elazul?"

The Knight had spun on his heels and strode out the door, going around the back of the house and following the trail of flattened grass around the workshop's hillock. And stopped, gazing in shock at the scene before him.

The ground between the tiny hill and the pond's feeder stream was rent in half a dozen places, dark earth showing amongst the grass in gaping wounds more than twice Elazul's height in length. There were scorch marks that had burned places moonless-night-black, and places where vines bristling with thorns still knotted themselves into impenetrable thickets. There were marks around the pond and stream itself that showed signs of recent flooding.

Sitting in one of the unscarred places was Xan, with Rei fast asleep in his lap, her arms wrapped around his waist as trusting as a child. The swordsman looked up when Elazul came into view, the eyes he shared with his sister dark and brooding. He jerked his head, golden hair gleaming through smatters of dirt—his feathered cap lay ripped and abandoned several yards away at the edge of one of the thorn-piles.

Elazul obeyed the silent summons and took a seat beside the pair, eyes only for the woman sleeping peacefully for the first time since Geo. After a moment, though, he steeled his nerve to look up and into Xan's face.

The man was clearly, as Rei would put it, Not Happy. He was, in fact, _glaring_ at Elazul with a displeasure that just made his resemblance to his sister all the more uncanny. His fingers nevertheless pushed a strand of hair away from Rei's face with the utmost gentleness; it was with a start that Elazul noticed that the hair ornaments the knife-fighter wore behind her ears weren't in their usual places and were laid out by Xan's hip. Xan was using one of them to tap out a faint, soft melody on the rest, something that sounded like a lullaby.

"Rei told me what happened." Xan's voice was calmer than his body language and pitched low for obvious reasons. It still made the Jumi Knight sweat. "Did you forget my warning so easily, Lapis Lazuli?" Elazul looked at him blankly. Warning? Xan let out a faint growl. "It would appear so. Probably shouldn't have tried talking to you at one in the damned morning, but still…Your memory needs work, Lazuli."

"I'm sorry," Elazul replied, not entirely sure what he was apologizing for.

Xan looked away, grumbling too softly for Elazul to catch his words. "Never mind," he said after a minute or two. "It isn't fair of me to blame you for that. Or for what happened." He dropped his gaze back down to his sister. "In case you forgot this, too, Lazuli, it isn't your fault that Rei keeps ending up in the middle of things like what happened."

"Isn't it?" The bitterness in his voice surprised even Elazul; he hadn't realized it had gone so deep. "I could have said no. I could have asked her to watch over Pearl while I was gone. It was my stupid mistake for her to come with me."

The open-handed swat to the back of his skull was unexpected and stung fiercely. Elazul's watering eyes were full of wounded confusion when he gaped at Xan, still playing that little tune on Rei's hair-pipes. "Apparently you forgot the whole conversation we had," Xan observed mildly. "I won't let you slide if you forget this time. Now listen closely, all right? It isn't your fault. If fault goes to anyone, it goes to whoever laid the geas on my family over a millennia ago and bound our spirits into searching. When you're near us, the magic of the Venstry clan takes the opportunity to strengthen and grow, binding your heart together with ours. With Rei, love makes the pull even harder for you to ignore."

He gave Elazul a wry, crooked smile. "And it's our family's luck and geas that brings us to places where we need to be. Because our purpose, laid in our very bones, _is to help people_. It doesn't matter that you were the one who brought Rei to Geo, Elazul. One of us would have found our way there anyway. So, no, you couldn't have really said no."

A warm weight abruptly landed against his shoulder, something cool and silky sliding across Xan's bare arm. The sleep-spell he'd been tapping out on Rei's hair-pipes had taken effect at last—Elazul was out cold against him, the roil of emotions clawing at his soul tamed for the moment. With a breathy sigh of relief, Xan stopped playing his spell and gently poked and prodded until Rei had shifted to his farther side and Elazul lay with his head in Xan's lap.

_Honestly,_ thought Xan in mild exasperation, _I thought he'd never drop off. Rei conked out after just a minute once I got her worn out. Even Escad took less time when I saw him last, poor misguided bastard. _He settled his fingertips against Elazul's temples, mouth twisting wryly at the way the muscles stayed tense even in sleep. _Salamander scorch me, but this one must have headaches the size of Gaeus._

Well, that would never do. Drawing on knowledge learned during his travels, Xan sent a feathering of Mana energy through his touch and smiled as the Knight's whole body went limp. Much better. Slowing his breath, the sprite sent his awareness down through his fingers and went searching. He found what he was looking for without any trouble: the soul-bond that stretched between Elazul and Rei, vibrating and sending erratic pulses of emotion both ways thanks to Elazul's untrained attempts at investigating it.

As he had already done for Rei, Xan delicately smoothed the place where the bond had adhered to Elazul's soul and coaxed the rest of it back into the slender cord that it had started as. When he was done with that, he carefully etched the surface of it with a ward against future tampering. It was something he was doing for the both of them; Rei didn't need to know just how much pain Elazul was hiding from her, and Elazul didn't need to be mauled when Rei eventually found how just how much he was lying to her. Not that he really was, but that would be how Rei would see it, and she'd feel really guilty about beating him up later, but that meant that Elazul would still be sporting some pretty impressive bruises for a while.

That is, he would be if Xan had any intention of letting the bond stay a two-way channel. Returned to the original levels, the bond that magic had made would only transmit one way, from Rei to Elazul. Why it worked that way Xan had no idea, but these two weren't quite ready for that next step. When they were, the connection would strengthen on its' own.

The swordsman felt his own strain ease as the feedback he'd been getting from both of his two idiots went silent at last. He'd been getting echoes from the overstressed bond for a week now and it had been driving him _nuts_. If this hadn't worked, or if Elazul hadn't responded to the spell like he was supposed to, Xan had been perfectly ready to drive the Knight into the ground with sparring and use another sleep-spell to take him the rest of the way out.

"Honestly," Xan muttered as he extricated himself, "why couldn't you two be like Pearl? She hasn't been half the trouble you two are, by yourselves or together." Since he hadn't been expecting an answer, he was fine with their quiet breathing as their only response. He fully expected them to be out for at least another hour, which would give him plenty of time to corral the twins and probably Pearl into settling these two into some form of bed. Or better yet, he could make the twins do it and take Pearl with him when he went to his house in Domina.

He grinned as he scooped Rei up and carried her towards the house. Oh, yeah. He liked that idea.

————

Xan's birthday and Midsummer came and went with the swordsman following suit. He left with a mended cap firmly on his head and a brand-new rig for his massive two-handed monster of a sword, and Rei's present to him in the shape of a new set of panpipes on his hip.

Behind him he left a much-calmer younger sister, a somewhat-less-stressed Jumi Knight, and a pretty Jumi girl who was most definitely warming up to him. Xan had put the week-and-change to good use, not only getting his equipment replaced or repaired as needed, but also doing what he did best.

Helping people.

It just so happened that this time it was two of his Bonded that he was helping. That it gave him an opportunity to continue charming a certain pretty Guardian he considered a pleasant bonus. As it was, by the time he was rigged and ready to go, Xan had convinced Elazul and Pearl to stay at his home for a little while since the Cottage was a bit crowded for five. His excuse was that his cactus and orchard tree were getting lonely; he'd sold all but one of his monsters to Jennifer over the past couple of months since he was never home and they deserved a master who would be there more often to care for them.

The one remaining monster was Nip's brother Shard, and he went happily bouncing off with Xan when the adventurer left for parts unknown again.

In the meantime, Xan could rest secure in the knowledge that the fragile soul bonds between his little sister and Elazul would have a chance to strengthen. And if they didn't admit to their feelings for each other by the time he came 'round again, he'd go find something to use as a clue-bat and knock some sense into them. _Honestly._

Thus, approximately another week after the disaster at Geo was allowed to pass in relative quiet. Rei felt her equilibrium returning more and more every day, and those around her even managed to get her to smile once or twice.

And then once more everything changed. Rei stepped out of her home one morning to find Elazul on the front walk, concern darkening his eyes to the color of seas after a storm. "Morning, Elazul," she greeted cautiously. "What's up?"

"Did Pearl come here this morning?" Elazul asked her without preamble.

Rei blinked. "Pearl? No, I haven't seen her. Why?"

But her friend wasn't listening. He was staring at a piece of cardstock he'd mangled in his fist, breath quickening. "So, then, this note…! Damn it!" He flung the crumpled paper to the ground and fixed Rei with a desperate gaze. "The jewel hunter has kidnapped her!"

Rei swore fit to burn the air and bolted back into her house. Elazul heard banging, a few more swear words, a clatter, an oath to Salamander, and then the noise of Rei's booted feet racing down her stairs. She exploded out the door and leaped the steps, yelling, "Bud, Lisa, there's an emergency, I'll be back later, be good!"

Elazul caught her by the arm before she'd made it to the gate, confusion taking up a place beside worry. "You're still helping us?"

"I hereby render a retort in which 'duh!' is featured," Rei slung back, shaking her arm free. "I'm not going to stop helping you just because something bad happens. I'm not going to let you beat up Sandra without me, either!"

That won her a faint hint of a smile. "Thank you. I _am_ grateful," Elazul told her. "But we have no clues with which to start looking."

"What about that note?" Rei swung back and picked up the discarded paper, uncreasing it as much as she could. After a moment, she looked up at Elazul. "I can't read this. What language has she written this in?"

Elazul moved up behind her, peering over her shoulder at the elegant script. "It says that she'll be waiting for us in Mekiv!" he exclaimed in mingled relief and anxiety. Rei immediately twisted around, grabbed his shoulder, and sent Mana looping around their feet, adding a desperate prayer that for once, her one and only transport spell would let her hop a closer distance than Lumina.

The two fighters disappeared in a quiet 'shing' of magic.

————

Rei starting apologizing profusely the second they popped into reality just inside the opening to Mekiv. Elazul merely picked himself up and pulled a still-apologizing Rei onto her own feet. "—I forgot to warn you that I don't have a lot of practice with the transport spell so it's rough and I'm sorry!"

"Rei, shut up and breathe," her friend ordered, not unkindly, while he scanned their surroundings. His gaze alighted on a Mad Mallard strolling casually in the main cavern with them, smoking a cigarette and giving the Boinks (which had multiplied to two) a wide berth.

"What are you two up to?" inquired the helmeted monster out of curiosity. It was watching them—or more specifically, Rei, who was taking deep breaths as ordered. And for some reason it seemed mildly disappointed.

Elazul stepped forward, which not only brought him into polite speaking range but gave the added bonus of shielding Rei from the—but no, that would be too strange. Why would a monster be leering at a sprite? He put his confusion aside for the moment to concentrate on the really important things. "We are looking for a friend. Have you seen her?" He put a hand threateningly to the hilt of his scimitar. "Speak the truth, or else…"

The Mallard merely blew a smoke ring at him. "Don't threaten me!" he snapped. "I'm a decorated officer! You're talking about an innocent-looking little girl, right? She was with some lady."

"A lady with orange flowers?" Elazul wasn't sure if he was hoping it was Sandra or not, for too many reasons to count.

Their informant puffed on his cigarette again, this time definitely leering. "Yeah, her! She was wearing a green skirt, and her legs were just fantastic!"

Rei let out a breathy 'eeww' as she ducked firmly into Elazul's shadow. He couldn't blame her. "So, which way did they go?" Elazul asked quickly, before the Mallard could wax eloquent on Sandra's charms.

"They took the left path," shrugged the bird-monster. "Listen, my smoke-break's about over. Don't tell the guys I was actually talking to you; could get me busted back down to private."

Elazul gave him an absentminded nod. "Pearl!" he muttered softly. "We have to hurry," he told Rei, who was digging in her pack.

"Right. Here. I got these made for cases like this." She handed him a pair of odd strips of something rough with leather thongs trailing from the corners. "It's shark-skin. You wear them tied to your feet. No slippage."

Understanding bloomed. "Which means we can run. Rei, you're a genius." Instincts took over for a moment, leaving him completely inured to the fact that he'd just given his companion a quick kiss on the cheek in his gratitude. Rei froze, a blush spreading clear across her face while Elazul knelt down and starting putting his skid-guards on. The knife-fighter snapped back to reality after an admirable four seconds and quickly began to tie her own skid-guards in place, and was done at the same time as Elazul.

Thankfully, he was too distracted to notice the lovely shade of bright pink still warming Rei's face, and he ran off without looking behind him, secure in the knowledge that she would be right behind him.

———

The pair ran through the damp caverns, cutting down any monsters that leaped into their path without slowing their headlong race. Rei brought them to a halt when they reached a spacious cave dotted with pillars of light from holes in the ceiling. A Sproutling was meandering in the aimless way that all of them seemed to, humming softly to itself. "Oh!" it squeaked when it saw them. "Wow. More visitors!"

"There've been other people through here?" Rei asked it.

The little creature nodded solemnly. "People don't come here often," it told her, "but I saw two girls pass by just a second ago."

Elazul strained towards the far side of the cave like a hound on a leash. "Pearl!"

"Which way did they go?" the knife-fighter queried.

"They went…straight…" the Sproutling dashed to the mouth of the left-hand tunnel and pointed. "This way!"

"Thanks!" Rei sprinted for the opening with Elazul as close as her shadow, but she paused when he stopped, confusion pouring into his eyes.

"My core…" he murmured, passing his fingertips over it. "Getting cloudy…Pearl…Where could she be?" he asked of empty air, before he broke into a sprint again. Rei frowned, puzzled, but followed after him.

A few caves later there was someone that Rei had never met before. He was hunchbacked, elderly, and obviously of some aquatic race of sprite. Broad green fins took the place of ears, his deep pink skin had a faint sheen of slime on it, and the barest tips of a tail-fin poked out from beneath the hem of his worn, shabby coat. He had two legs, which put him in the 'confused' spot on Rei's chart of sprite races.

But his voice, when he spoke, was unexpectedly cultured and deep. "I saw the stone here," he said softly to them. "A tiny stone, giving off beautiful light. It was like the stars in the night sky." And then he bowed courteously. "Well, what is it you seek?"

"We're looking for a girl, about her height," Elazul gestured to Rei, "wearing a white dress. Have you seen her?"

"Are you two her friends?" The stranger gazed at them steadily. "Then you'd better hurry."

Elazul made a strangled sound. "I know! Which way was she taken?"

"Where else but along this middle path?" chided the sprite, raising a hand nearly covered by a hem of lace to the only other way out of their current cave. Elazul began to rush off, but Rei stayed. Something, perhaps her instincts, were poking at her to talk to the man.

"I'm sorry, but who are you?" she asked him.

The sea-man bowed again. "I am not one of renown."

Rei was unconvinced. "And you like beautiful things?"

"Is there anyone in this world who hates what is beautiful?" replied her conversation partner. "Men compete…sometimes they kill each other just to get it. The greater the beauty, the more it is vied for, and the more it is hurt. Such tragedy…" he finished mournfully.

"Rei! What are you doing!?" hissed Elazul. Rei batted air in a 'just a second' gesture, still gazing steadily at the fish-man.

"What do you know about the Jumi?" she asked softly. Something about this one's speech had made that part of her honed to the presence of Sandra light into a slow fire. Elazul, about to come back and grab her, stilled. He recognized this.

Rei was hunting.

Mournfully, the stranger gazed back at the knife-fighter. "There is a legend that whoever sheds tears for a Jumi shall turn to stone. This is to forbid contact between the Jumi and others. I think I know why…"

"And the jewels that have been stolen?"

Still in his calm voice, the man replied, "A friend of mine longs for jewels that sparkle."

Emeralds chilled to green fire. "Indeed? Thank you, sir, for your information." Rei gave him a bow of her own, then nodded to Elazul. "Come on. We've got a friend to save."

Elazul turned to follow as she passed him, only to falter. "Wait…" Surprised, it was Rei's turn to look back and stare. After a heartbeat, the Knight shook his head. "No. It's nothing…" His companion disappeared down the path. Elazul stayed a moment, fingertips resting ever-so-lightly on the blue gem in his chest. "I have a bad feeling about this," he murmured to himself. "My core has never clouded so much before…"

But Rei was getting too far ahead. Never more thankful for her innovations, Elazul took off after his friend.

He nearly smacked into her less than a dozen yards farther into the caves. She had stopped without warning and was watching the scene unfolding before her. Sandra was pacing restlessly a short distance away from an agitated Pearl, who was standing with her arms crossed—not in defense, but in rising temper. "Well?" Sandra demanded, stopping to scowl at the Jumi girl. "Have you remembered your true purpose?"

Pearl stamped a foot. "How many times are you going to ask me?" she wanted to know. "I have no idea what you're talking about!"

Sandra bristled. "Why you…!!"

Elazul rushed forward, scimitar making a ringing sound as he drew it. "Get away from Pearl!" he shouted. Rei smacked her forehead. So much for the element of surprise.

"Elazul!" cried the Guardian, brightening in relief. The three of them formed a triangle, Rei still a yard away and watching everything intently. Sandra's attention was all for Elazul—which was fine, since the stubborn idiot could defend himself perfectly well. Rei wasn't about to count on whatever knack it was that let Pearl wander about unscathed to kick in now.

Sandra chuckled and informed the two fighters that she'd been waiting for them to show up. Elazul in turn demanded that she hand Pearl over to him immediately. To which Sandra inquired archly, "Do I look like a woman who would listen to you?"

Elazul took another step forward, twisting his sword until he had it balanced alongside his face in a dangerous salute. "I'll make you listen…with this sword!"

Sandra's laughter echoed through the large cavern. "Too late!" she cried. Her wrist flicked; one of her heavy calling cards spun through the air and scored a line in the gleaming perfection of Elazul's core. He fell to one knee as pain rushed through him, stealing his breath. His hand instantly covered his core to save it from further damage as Pearl screamed his name. Cursing herself for her stupidity a thousand times over in her head, Rei covered the remaining few feet in a blur and put herself squarely between the wounded Jumi and the jewel hunter.

"Pearl," cooed Sandra, "your dear Elazul's core is scratched!"

Rei risked a look over her shoulder, but couldn't see if her hated enemy was understating the damage she'd wrought. She didn't know how sensitive the core of a Jumi was, had no way to gauge if Elazul was going to die and push her over the edge.

It was a measure of his feelings that Elazul was trying to regain his feet, breath hissing his agony with each attempt. Sandra in the meantime was gloating. "What now, my pretty?" she purred to the Jumi girl staring at her Knight in pale-faced shock. "Will you not save your Knight with tears of compassion?"

"Don't…" Elazul panted, "don't listen…to her…"

The sound of scales scraping the stone brought the attention of everyone but Elazul towards the way that the fighters had come. The fish-like man from before came into view, his face set into lines of disapproval. "Sandra, stop that!"

All of the sadistic amusement in Sandra's face vanished. "The king…" she breathed in respect.

"It's pointless to hurt each other," the man scolded, stopping when he was standing where Rei had been just a few moments ago.

Sandra's features twisted in fury. "I cannot stand this girl…And all the Jumi!" she shouted, the high roof of the cave taking the sound and warping it. Somehow that made it sound even uglier. "Why do you not cry?" she demanded, turning back to Pearl. "Answer me!"

Pearl raised her chin in defiance. "No matter how sad…I cannot shed tears. We can't cry!"

"You're incapable of healing!" Sandra hissed. "You are just a princess!"

Rei took the moment of distraction as an opportunity, not to attack Sandra, but to drop to one knee and check on the damage to Elazul's core. The Knight was pale and shaking beneath her steadying hand as she gently pried his protective fingers away from the blue stone. A gash as long as the last joint of her thumb marred the gleaming surface but she couldn't tell how deep it was in the uncertain light. "Don't you even _think_ about dying on us," she growled to him under her breath as she stood once more as guard.

Pearl, in the meantime, had agreed that she wasn't good as much else, and had remarked in the tones of someone remembering some long-forgotten lesson that the Jumi had lost their tears long ago.

Sandra snorted her contempt. "The Jumi did lose something," she snapped, "but tears it was not. Listen to what your core tells you!" Pearl blinked at her in sudden confusion. Sandra made a disgusted noise and flung an arm out in an encompassing gesture. "Still you fail to understand. Even you, heiress to the memories of antiquity…" Her fist clenched. "Jaded stones which lost their clarity. Elazul the Knight and Pearl the Guardian! Both your cores are mine now!"

Pearl took a deep breath. "I don't need the power to heal…" she whispered to something that sang a wild, fierce tune deep within her. "Just give me the power to fight!"

Rei whirled back down to cover Elazul's head when the cavern exploded into a shower of dark-petaled flowers. Gasped when a part of her soul that had a feeling of 'connection' suddenly wrenched into a new pattern entirely. Blinking through the spots in her vision, Rei craned her head to look over her shoulder and stared in jaw-dropped shock.

Where Pearl had stood but a heartbeat before was someone that Rei had only seen once: the silent woman in the highest room in Leires. From nowhere a massive war-hammer dropped into the woman's waiting hand as she gazed at the thief who obviously hadn't expected this. "Blackpearl!" gasped Sandra, fear and no little awe beginning to break through the mask of fury.

"Pearl…" Elazul gasped, once more trying to rise. Rei's arms went from protection to support when the effort sent him reeling for the floor. Her eyes were only for the stand-off right behind her.

"Do you really wish to battle with me, Sandra?" inquired the woman that Pearl had become. Her voice had changed as well; no more the soft, sweet near-soprano voice that had become so familiar to Rei. Instead it was closer to an alto, and would have been rich as velvet if it wasn't so cold.

Sandra gulped. "No!" she answered vehemently. "I would never do such a…" Trailing off, Sandra bolted for the farther exit.

Blackpearl measured Rei with a gaze of patient stone and did not find her wanting. Nodding, Rei rose to the unspoken offer that gaze held after making sure that Elazul wasn't going to do something stupid, like try to stand again. The Jumi Knight was nearly insensible, anyway. She gave Sandra's master a warning glance as Rei followed Blackpearl the way that Sandra had gone.

A Jewel Beast awaited them. Tired of Sandra's favorite trick, tired of fighting, and too worried about what was going on, Rei went after the creature with efficiency rather than with any sense of satisfaction. Blackpearl proved to be an admirable fighter—one good whack with that massive hammer sent the Beast flying back.

This one was barely stronger than the others before it. It broke apart, sliced and bashed by two determined women, leaving them alone in the cavern. Rei immediately ran back to where she'd left Elazul, finding him in an barely-conscious heap with Sandra standing a few heart-stopping feet away. The jewel thief looked up from watching the rise and fall of Elazul's chest, only to look away when Blackpearl came in just behind Rei.

"I can't believe she would just throw away someone who is like a sister to her," Sandra muttered, sounding for one brief moment like the barely-adult woman she appeared to be.

Blackpearl made no sign that she'd noticed that wounded voice. "Is Florina alive?" was all she wanted to know.

Sandra risked a glance. "Didn't she always say, 'Always find the answer yourself.'"

"I remember…" acknowledged Blackpearl slowly.

"I'll be going now," Sandra said calmly. She looked from Blackpearl to Rei, and her mouth quirked up into her infamous smirk. "We'll meet again, Jumi Knight…" And with that, she ran off, leaving Rei to wonder distantly which one of the two women she'd been talking to. The formidable Blackpearl, or the sprite who hadn't been able to keep her precious charge safe.

Elazul stirred, looking up hazily at the Jumi woman gazing impassively back. "Pearl…"

"Pearl is gone," he was told flatly. Blackpearl's voice softened. "You are free, Lapis Knight. I am sorry for the pain I caused you." And then Blackpearl, too, left, walking away without a backwards glance. Elazul made a lost sound, twisting in Rei's arms to look in the direction she'd gone. It was one motion too many, the pain finally opening the door to unconsciousness.

The man that Sandra had called 'the king' rested a hand on Elazul's shoulder, ignoring the protective fury blazing to life in emerald eyes. "We must not let this beautiful stone die," he declared, his other hand moving in some arcane gesture.

Rei found herself in her own dining room with Elazul half-gathered into her lap, with Bud and Lisa's startled squawks sounding flat after the echoes of Mekiv. She spared hardly a glance for the one who'd brought her and Elazul back to her home; muscles built in her forge took the strain of lifting the comatose Knight without a whisper of complaint.

Within a few moments he was laid out in her own bed and the task of keeping him there began. Rei answered the questions of her apprentices brusquely, most of her attention for the man who held so much of her, if he only knew it.

The gash in his core glittered sharply in the clean sunlight, proving to be only a few Goddess-be-thanked centimeters deep. Rei could see the colors properly now, and if the darker tint towards the depths of Elazul's core was anything to go by, she'd come much closer than she'd thought to losing him.

Rei felt someone watching her and looked up. Her apprentices had gone downstairs while she'd been distracted by her examinations—the presence she felt was Sandra's companion, standing by her little table. His eyes held compassion only, nothing more. "Thank you for your help," she told him, unable to shake the uneasy feeling he gave her. "If you would, I would ask a favor of you."

"And what would that be?"

Rei looked down at Elazul and his wounded core. "Tell Sandra that I was only going to kill her before." Her mouth hardened. "Now I'm going to be happy about it."

Even without looking, the sense of the stranger's presence changed to wary readiness. When she made no other move, cloth rustled as he bowed and disappeared.

Rei dragged a chair over to her bedside and dropped into it. By its own volition, one of her hands reached out to gently smooth Elazul's bangs out of his face, rested for a moment on his forehead. Until she was certain that he was going to pull through, not even the cottage falling down would get her to budge from this spot. "Don't you even _think_ about dying on me," she whispered grimly as she settled in to wait.

Elazul kept on breathing.

————

Yep. Xan's met Escad. Apparently the obsessed one only rubs females wrong—and only the ones inclined to swat annoying things, at that. But can you imagine the stress headaches Escad must get from all those fanatical thoughts of his?

Now, aren't you glad I'm posting another chapter after this? 'n,.,n'


	23. Two Pearls

This does include content from 'More Than a Scene'. However, it has been altered to fit with the storyline. Not a whole lot, but some.

————

He was lost. Alone. Abandoned. His home was a forgotten ruin swallowed by the desert. His vows were shattered, his heart broken. What did he have now, to keep him here?

_Live,_ chanted a voice from nowhere and everywhere at once. _Live, live, live. _

Why?

_Live. Don't die. Don't fade. _

He wanted to let go. Wanted to walk the edge of the abyss just a little farther, to let himself fall into the darkness. But a hand clutched his sleeve with desperate strength, a hand he knew as well as his own core-song. She would not let him fall.

A broad hand placed itself squarely on his chest below the glimmering star of his core and shoved him back from the abyss, hard. _"Dig in your heels, Lazuli,"_ commanded another voice. _"You've fought for your whole life, you stubborn dreamer! Will you let those dreams fall to ash so easily?"_

He knew the man who appeared before him, gleaming bright in the shadows. And he could not deny the love that wrapped around him, pulling him farther into the light. _She left me._

Challenge was a wildfire in Xan's grin, igniting his soul again. _"And you fall apart just like that? Show some spine, Lapis Lazuli. She's _your_ Guardian._

_"So go get her back."_

————

Rei sat in the chair she'd dragged from her bedroom's table, her chin cupped in her hand as she watched the slow breathing of her bed's occupant. Silky green-blue hair tumbled across pillow and shoulders, renegade bangs falling into a handsome face and hiding thick lashes from sight. The jewel grown into his skin and muscle matched his eyes exactly, the same shade of cerulean blue. It gleamed just below the dip of his collarbone, clearly visible due to the fact that Rei had had to leave him only his pants to keep the idiot from getting up and getting himself killed.

He was Rei's friend, a staunch ally. Quick to anger, slow to cool, he was brash, headstrong, and frighteningly young for a Jumi. A little older than Rei herself, it should have been years before he'd taken the mantle of a Jumi Knight and the role of a Guardian's protector.

It had been three days since he'd nearly died.

Rei could see it all replaying in her mind again: looking for Pearl, Elazul's charge, once again in the caves beyond Luon Highway. Finding her in the company of Alexandra the Core Hunter and a strange male who claimed to be of no importance. Sandra, threatening and then wounding Elazul all for the goal of getting Pearl to cry—a skill lost to all but one Jumi, the long-lost Florina—or to remember…something.

Sandra failing to wring even one tear from Pearl, instead invoking a rush of anger and fierce protectiveness that ended in Pearl's transformation from gentle, forgetful girl to harsh warrior. Who had then walked off without a single backwards glance at her Knight after Sandra had vanished in the face of Blackpearl's challenge. The stranger had left after transporting Rei and Elazul to the knife-fighter's home. What his motives were for doing so, Rei couldn't even begin to guess. Harsh lessons had taught her to be wary of the first reason given; that the stranger had claimed to have no desire to let Elazul die meant little to her now.

Anxious green eyes flickered to the stone in Elazul's chest, his fragile and beautiful core, the life of every Jumi. They settled on the pale blue substance working to fill in the gash that marred the surface. Sandra had wounded him there with one of her razor-edged calling cards, knowing full well that to have cut a little deeper would have meant the Knight's death.

And not caring.

Rei had nearly lost him, and she knew it. Elazul had hovered by the Gates for nearly a full day before his spirit had gotten back up from the beating it had taken. He clung to life now with reassuring tenacity, though his stubbornness had produced the unfortunate side effect of delirium. He'd tried no less than a dozen times by now to get up and go searching for Pearl—or Blackpearl, as the case was—despite the fact that he couldn't even stand on his own.

Smiling a little despite herself at the thought, Rei gently reached over to reassure herself once again that there really was a pulse in the body before her. A butterfly's touch of fingertips to gleaming stone was all that was needed; warmth pulsed steadily beneath her delicate caress even through the calluses built by years of playing music for elementals.

Elazul's breathing hitched, shifting into a lighter rhythm. Rei's fingers moved to brush that long curtain of bangs out of his face so that he could see her more easily, and smiled into sleep-glazed blue. "Welcome back," she murmured. "Are you really awake this time or are you going to make another break for it?"

His forehead creased in obvious confusion. Well, that was a positive sign. The last few times he'd roused he'd been fighting to get free of the blankets by now. "How long?" he croaked, voice barely a whisper.

"Have you been out?" Rei guessed. He nodded. "About three days. I'll admit you had me worried for a little, there."

"T-thr—" Elazul's throat closed, protesting its' abuse. He cleared it and tried again. "Th-three days?"

Rei nodded. "Do you remember anything?"

The Knight frowned, obviously sifting through memories. Rei knew he remembered the important parts when his eyes widened, whatever color he'd regained over the last three days of rest vanishing to leave him ashen pale. She was ready to hold him down when he tried to lunge up and out of the bed, a task that was disturbingly easy. It had been harder when he'd been out of his mind with pain and worry, when he'd only just stopped lingering near death. That had been when she'd had to take away his armor and sword and enough clothes for him to understand that she _would_ strip him bare if she had to.

"_Pearl!_ Let me up, Rei! I need to find her!"

Rei kept her voice gentle, but her hands pressing his shoulders into the mattress never wavered. "Perhaps. But Elazul, I'm barely making an effort to keep you still. Can you say the same for attempting to rise?"

"Rei, _please_."

"Elazul, I'm not going to let you up until I have to _work_ at holding you down. As you are now, the first monster to come along will kill you without effort. As will Sandra, if she chooses to steal your core instead of damage it."

Elazul stilled. "That explains why it's hard to breathe," he muttered, sinking back into the mattress.

"It does," Rei agreed mildly. "I see you forgot about that part. Are you going to stay put, or will I have to take your pants as well, and let you go rescuing in your breechclout?"

"Stay," Elazul growled. The young woman removed her hands and leaned back in her chair.

"All right. Since you're listening to reason for a change, let me first reassure you that I haven't been sitting idle. Lisa and Bud have been taking care of you while I checked the area around my home. Neither Pearl nor Blackpearl are in Domina, the Mekiv Caverns, or at Luon Highway. Those are the places I have searched."

"So there's no sign of either?"

"No. Not there. But I haven't checked the farther areas yet." Rei sighed, leaning forward and resting her chin on her laced fingers. "To tell you the truth, I was more worried about _you_. Blackpearl seems well able to take care of herself, and if she remains the dominant personality then she won't be in danger from monsters or Sandra."

"Why not?"

Rei gave him a tired smile. "You were nearly unconscious by then. When Blackpearl surfaced, _Sandra ran_. That bodes favorable for our lass' fighting skills. If Sandra won't face her, then monsters won't have much hope against her. The jewel beast she and I fought together certainly didn't."

Elazul abruptly made a lost sound, his expression that of someone crying without tears. "Rei, she left me," he said softly in slow realization. "It's not just that I am her Knight. I'm a Jumi, and she abandoned me with nothing more than a 'goodbye'. She was the greatest of us, once. Blackpearl protected all of the Jumi from those who would hurt us. How could she do that?"

Rei reached out, her hand resting on his shoulder, this time in a gesture of comfort instead of restraint. "I don't know, Elazul. When we find her, we can ask her. Until then, rest and heal while I keep looking."

"Master Rei?" The young woman looked up from hurting blue eyes to find Lisa standing by the banister guarding the way downstairs. She held a cup from of something red and dark that smelled sweet. "I made some juice for Mister Elazul. Rocket papaya and apricat. Bud said that if I was going to make something calming for the Knight, I should've just drowned him in apricat juice when you got him here."

Rei managed to hide the amused smile those words brought out. Bud's blunt, honest opinions about everything—the unfavorable ones about Elazul in particular—always made her smile. Accepting the cup from Lisa, she replied in a light tone, "Well then, you can tell Bud that I said Elazul isn't the only one who could do with a small attitude adjustment, and that I suggested he help you make a peach-puppy cobbler for dessert tonight."

Lisa grinned. If her master felt happy enough to tease Bud, even indirectly, then the Jumi man would be okay. That was good. As she turned to trot downstairs to deliver Master's Rei's message to Bud, she heard, "And thank you for at least _trying_ to get along."

Lisa paused, one foot already on the stairs, and gave her teacher a bigger smile from around the banister. "It isn't too hard," she replied cheerfully. "Besides, I like him. He makes you smile even more than Bud can. Even when you're complaining about him, you smile." With that, she pattered downstairs in search of her brother, leaving her red-faced master to help blushing Elazul drink.

—————

The next morning Rei had gone, leaving Elazul still in her bed to rest and think. The two of them had gone over the possible places Blackpearl or Pearl might have gone, as well as the idea to recheck the three areas Rei had already searched. The places at the top of the list were those who had a natural mystic draw to them. The Tower of Leires was at the very top of the list but Rei demurred going there first, saying that she'd rather have Elazul there with her for that one in case something meaner than Sandra or her jewel beasts showed up. Instead, Rei'd head for Gato Grottoes, the Ulkan Mines, and the Mindas Ruins as the next likeliest places.

Neither Rei nor Elazul spoke aloud the thought that had been troubling them: Blackpearl might decide that she didn't _want_ Pearl to resume being the dominant personality, and fight Pearl's friends to keep herself on top.

Or worse, that _Pearl_ wouldn't want to resume her place, leaving Elazul alone again.

Just as Elazul was getting to that part in his looped thinking again, Lisa appeared from below, carrying what looked—and smelled—like a proper breakfast. Honeyed porridge, fruit, and more calming juice. His mouth watered.

Lisa proved surprisingly strong for someone her size—and it was no wonder, considering her teacher—when she helped Elazul limp to the small table her master kept up here, nibbling on a few cherry bombs while the Jumi Knight tucked in. She was staying to make sure he didn't fall over, or something else that would make Rei upset with him when she came home.

Elazul was safely back in bed and Lisa was tidying the breakfast things away when he finally spoke more than his single, quiet 'thank you'. "What did you mean, yesterday, about me making Rei smile?" It sounded like the question had been bothering him almost as much as the ones about Pearl.

Lisa blinked at him; she was a little surprised by the abrupt question, though she had been expecting something like it from him since last night. Then the plate she'd picked up was set gently on the tray before she turned to give him her full, undivided attention.

"Master Rei was pretty serious when we first met her," the young Elf explained, letting the words come as they would. "Of course, you might think that it would have been because Bud was trying to take over everything with a bunch of pumpkins, but when she made us her apprentices, we found out that was how she always was. She was always nice, but she hardly ever smiled."

Elazul stayed silent, and Lisa went on. "As she spent more time with us, Bud figured out that he could get her to smile and laugh by saying exactly what he thought, as directly as possible. Even when it wasn't very nice. Not counting you, he's actually gotten nicer about things since we came. Master Rei's gentled him some. Then she met you."

"I remember that. I was yelling at a girl in the pub in Domina—that was where I'd tracked Pearl to."

"Master told us about that, and how she sidetracked you into talking about your problem instead of yelling at Rachel some more. She also told us you were stubborn, overprotective, and the most loyal person she'd ever met," Lisa told him bluntly. "But what confused Bud and me for a while, was that she was smiling every second she told us about you and finding Pearl."

She was? Elazul had noticed that she'd smiled a lot down in Mekiv Caverns, but he'd put it down to an enjoyment of fighting. Now that he thought about it, though, that smile had gotten a little more cheerful every time he'd stepped between her and a monster. Maybe he _had_ been overprotective…

The strange little smile that Lisa had been wearing disappeared, the young girl twisting a clean napkin into knots. "Then one day, Master Rei came home from Gato Grottoes with the same look she was wearing four days ago when she brought you here. Like someone had taken her favorite knife, stuck it in her heart, and twisted. She didn't talk to us, didn't explain anything, just shut herself in the monster barn with Nip," the only Rabite Elazul had ever met that was as cuddly as the exterior, "and Tsuta." How a Rattler Boa could manage to look cute was beyond Elazul, but damned if Rei's second pet monster didn't manage it. "She stayed there all day, skipped supper, and we think she slept out there, too. She hadn't been inside before Bud and I went to bed, but she was up before both of us. We were eating breakfast when she told us 'Someone stole the Flame of Hope' and that was all she ever said about it."

Elazul felt a pang that had nothing to do with his healing injury. "So she _was_ there," he murmured, feeling his own heart hurt. He'd gotten the news of Rubens' death while on one of his usual searches for Pearl, not long after he had traveled a little with Rei and she'd told him about a murder she'd witnessed. He'd never thought that the murder and Rubens' death were one and the same. Had Rei really learned to lie and hide herself so well? For some reason, that hurt almost as much as knowing one of the last of his kind had died at Sandra's hands.

Lisa didn't look surprised that he knew more than she did about the story. She just kept going. "Master didn't really smile for a few days after that, until she bumped into you again in Domina's pub. When she came home, she talked about an adventure you had at Duma Desert and the trip along Madora Beach. It wasn't like the theft had never happened, 'cause I saw her looking sad about something, sometimes, when she thought no one was watching. It was like there was too much to smile and laugh about for her _not_ to smile."

One of Elazul's fondest memories of recent times was that showdown in Duma that had somehow ended in a display of gorgeous fireworks. Rei had laughed aloud, watching the colorful explosions fill the sky. _"The only thing,"_ she'd confided to him as they'd headed for Madora, _"that could have made that better was if it had been at night."_

"See?" Lisa said, breaking him from the memory, "You're smiling, too." And Elazul found that he was. "After Master found Pearl at Leires and escorted her in and out, she came home swearing and laughing about your offer to 'take care of the small fry'. She complained a lot the next couple days that your version of it meant letting her plow through all the monsters she'd dealt with on the way up all the way down again, with Pearl doing this cute little squeak of frustration whenever she had to duck behind Master without hitting back. And Sandra and her jewel beast. Master complained a lot about them, too. And except for when she complained about Sandra, she smiled.

"Every time a Jumi core got stolen, she'd do what she did the first time and go hole up in the monster barn, or lock herself in her workshop for the whole day. She hasn't turned to stone yet so I suppose she's never actually cried for any of them, but her heart hurts. Bud and I, we didn't realize that the jewels she talked about were Jumi cores until the day you and Master came back from Geo with the same stormclouds in your eyes, and you told us about that emerald Jumi girl. Master was too busy making sure that Pearl, at least, was okay to lock herself away. And every time I thought she might cry, you would do something to make her smile again. Even if it was just trying to learn how to cut up vegetables without hurting yourself."

The smile that Lisa gave him then told Elazul that the Elf girl hadn't been fooled by his clumsiness. She knew that he was perfectly capable of handling a knife, but she appreciated the effort anyway. She turned, picked up the tray, and gave Elazul a look that was far too serious for any child to be wearing. "Master Rei likes you," Lisa said, again choosing to be frank at her mentor's possible expense. "She calls you and Pearl the closest friends she has. That hurts Bud, because he can't understand the difference between the friendship Master has with us, her apprentices, and the friendship she has with you. Master won't abandon us, and she'll fight anyone that tries to hurt people she cares about. So she'll wear herself out looking for Pearl. She'll forget to eat, she won't sleep unless she's about to drop, and she'll go through any monster that gets in her way even if she could go around if it's faster.

"She wants you safe and healed because she cares a lot about you. You and Pearl are the reasons that she didn't cry over the emerald Jumi girl she wasn't able to save, or any of the other Jumi that Sandra snatched from under her nose. If you or Pearl die, then we lose our master, because we won't be able to stop her from crying. She'll turn to stone if she loses either of you. That, Mister Elazul, is why Bud doesn't like you. I do, because even if she does turn to stone, she'll have smiled more because she knew you.

"But…please. Don't let her turn to stone."

————

Rei came back a little over a week later, not as worn out as Lisa had thought she'd be—Elazul guessed that that had something to do with a tired Nip being carried in his owner's arms. The Rabite could do a marvelous job hinting that now would be a good time to eat, or reminding a person that night is for sleeping. Elazul had noted that in his other adventures with the fighter and her pets.

Anything?" he asked her when she came up, even though he knew what the answer would be. Rei collapsed into her chair after pulling it back over to the bed. Elazul was propped up with a few extra pillows so that he could read a book Lisa had picked for him from her mentor's store of them.

"Nothing. No hint, no sign. I thought Pearl alone was hard to find, but with Blackpearl in the mix it's damned near impossible."

"Did you go to Leires?"

Rei scowled at him. "Do I _look_ suicidal to you? Elazul, the last time I went into that place I ended up fighting a vicious jewel beast and a giant freaking _centaur_. Alone, I might add. Neither of my pets would be enough of a help, Bud and Lisa are too inexperienced to fight things like that, and I am not bringing those dragoons into this mess. And anyway, I needed my apprentices here to look after things."

"And me."

"And you," she agreed. "Besides, the last time I went to Leires without a Jumi I got Boinked out of there before I set one foot through the gates. Damn Boinks," she finished in a dark mutter.

"Only useful half the time or less," Elazul added, heartfelt annoyance at the creatures in his voice. Large, pink creatures that looked like a child's patchwork hippopotamus with too many legs, Boinks had the unique ability to teleport a person who touched them to the end of their tail—wherever that tail ended, something that seemed to vary a lot.

Rei nodded once to second the emotion, then changed the subject. "How are you feeling?"

"Better, but still a little weak," Elazul replied. "Lisa's been taking good care of me and making sure I eat plenty of things from your garden."

"Ah," sighed Rei with obvious longing, "fresh fruit. I can't wait. I'm going to get something to munch on, take a bath, and maybe find something useful in my library before I go to sleep. Do you need anything?" she queried, half-risen.

"No, thank you."

"All right, then. We'll head off to Leires when you feel up to it." With a wave of her hand, Rei ambled off down below. Elazul read for a little while longer, then fell asleep despite himself and all the rest he'd been getting. He only half-woke when someone came back upstairs, and stayed in that between place when he recognized Rei's voice. She was murmuring—perhaps to her cactus? Lisa had mentioned that she told it things whenever she got back from an adventure—and the soft rhythm of her words, touched with the accent that was singular to her and her brother, chased away his most recent nightmare. He heard her mention something about Niccolo, a rather oversized rabbit-man with a greed matched only by his girth, and a vampire that had thirsted for the blood of the innocent dove. More clearly, he heard her vow to never bring Pearl to the Ruins, in case the vanquishing Rei had given the blood-sucker hadn't taken.

After that, her footsteps went past him and echoed down the stairs. A moment later, Elazul caught the sounds of a light patter, as of oddly-shaped, small feet running across the floor, and a quill-on-parchment kind of noise. He managed to crack an eye open in time to see that cactus of Rei's scurry back to its' pot and climb in, for all the world like it had never left. Elazul decided he had gone back to sleep and was dreaming—for who had ever heard of a cactus that walked?—and closed his eye again.

When he woke fully, night and the moon were sitting outside the open window, singing their lullabies to the creatures of day. The house was quiet, with only the occasional creak as the house or the tree it was built into settled. Elazul swung his legs over the edge of his soft, bar-free cage and winced as he stood. His core-wound, almost healed, complained mightily about him being on his feet without any kind of external support. The Knight sternly told his nerves endings to be quiet, added a finger to his lips for the cactus in case it thought about tattling, and slipped past the half-open door to the Elf children's bedroom.

Going down the stairs with only the railings was a bit more of a challenge than just walking, but Elazul managed it, digging his things out of the chest by the kitchen-nook and slipping into them with a satisfying lack of noise. Even his sword was quiet as he strapped it on, as if it too, wanted to get away noiselessly.

Cat-quiet, Elazul crept to the library door and opened it enough to peek in. He'd suggested to Bud that Rei would be pleased if the creaky hinges were oiled, and the boy had proceeded to grease every hinge in the house into silken silence. His caution was rewarded: Rei slumped at her desk, a tome open beneath the pillow of her arms, the sound of her breathing mingling with the faint ticking of little crab feet as two small pink crabs scurried beneath the desk.

Elazul blinked. She'd brought two of those things _home_? When had she done that?

He gave himself a mental whack and silently withdrew. It didn't matter right now. Confident in the knowledge that the Sproutling who usually kept an eye on the front path would be as deep asleep as the rest of the house and the pet monsters, Elazul slipped out the front door and started making his way to the Tower of Leires.

————

"That stubborn, thick-headed, dirt-for-brains, sneaky sonnuva _polter box_!" swore Rei the next morning, volume increasing with every word until she was shouting. "I'm gonna wring his Jumi neck for him when I catch up!" Her hands flew, packing clean clothes for the five-day trip to Leires even as she snarled dire threats to Elazul's anatomy. "That idiot knows damned well he isn't strong enough to go larking off to the Tower by himself, and what does he do?"

"Sneaks out in the middle of the night to go larking off to the Tower," chorused Bud and Lisa from outside. Rei stuck her head out the window long enough to raspberry her apprentices and their loyal chant of the complaint she's made a dozen times, then got back to packing. Nip would be staying here this time—_Might as well give someone a break,_ Rei thought wryly to herself—and Tsuta would get a chance to show off his watchsnake skills. The Rattler Boa, bigger than she was with an impressive hood-span, was better at intimidating would-be bandits than Nip, anyway, mostly because Rei kept encountering things who had somehow never seen just how nasty a Rabite could get.

Her things packed, Rei slung her bag onto her shoulder, checked the gold jewelry she wore that would expand into her armor when needed, and made sure her knives were in their places on her hips. She ran downstairs, whistled up Tsuta, and raced out her gate to Leires.

————

Somehow Rei didn't catch up to Elazul until the gates of the Tower, where she found him down on one knee, panting with effort, one hand over his core in an unconscious, protective gesture. He glanced up at her approaching footsteps and Tsuta's slithering over the path, then froze with an expression that would, under other circumstances, have made Rei burst into laughter. His face said, quite clearly, 'oh, _shit_.'

"Tell me, Elazul," Rei spoke in a calm, reasonable tone as she came even with the Knight, "are you suicidal by nature or has that wound in your core damaged your mind?"

"I had to come," he told her somewhat breathily, hand still over his core as though afraid Rei would finish Sandra's effort in a rage.

"I understand that, you idiot," she snapped back, "but look at you! This trip has you so worn out you can barely stand, and you haven't even gone through the gates yet!"

"I _was_ waiting for you," he pointed out.

Rei's fierce expression softened a bit. "Well, it's nice to know you haven't lost your wits completely. But I would have been happier about this if you'd waited just a few more days."

"I'm almost healed," Elazul assured her, uncovering his core so that she could see that the gash was the merest scratch in the material. The paler blue that had been filling the gash in had darkened to its' proper hue at the edges, blurring the lines until the paler color seemed a normal highlight. "I just…pushed myself harder than I probably should have."

The young woman rolled her eyes at the obviousness of that. "Well, duh. I can see that, Lord Understatement." She sighed, one hand rumpling her bangs as she studied her friend. "Do you even sense Pearl here?"

Elazul nodded. "It's faint, but not the same way it would be if she'd just spent time here. I'll bet Pearl's up in that room at the top."

Rei looked at him askance, then sent her gaze leaping the balconies visible from where they stood. "If you fall over, I don't care _how_ close we are to the top," she told him flatly, turning back to him at last. "I will haul your stubborn rump back home and tie you to my bed until you're strong enough to get yourself loose. Or until you annoy me enough that I'll let you run off and get killed, whichever comes first and depending on which knots I use."

Remembering the conversation he'd had with Lisa—well, _lecture_ would be more like it, Elazul amended—the Lapis Knight understood that Rei had said that because she cared, and that the second half of the threat was pure irritation that he'd insisted on coming here before he'd entirely healed. So instead of snapping back something that might have hurt more than he'd mean it to, Elazul just gave his friend a cocky smile and pushed himself to his feet. "Then give me a hand giving this Tower a thorough cleaning," he challenged, adding an inspired, "I'll bet even weakened as I am that I'll still kill more monsters than you."

His grin sparked an answering, wicked smile from green eyes and a plush mouth that was far more suited to smiling than the absent, mild frown it had been wearing. Rei tossed her hair over her shoulder, making her hair-pipes ring, and tore the air with a wildly-sharp laugh. "You're on, Elazul! First one to Pearl gets to swat her for making us worry!"

Blades aglow in the moonlight that was all the natural light Leires ever received, the two fighters strode up the path with a fierce-eyed serpent following at their heels.

————

Rei watched Elazul in worry as they climbed the last flight of steps to the eleventh floor of Leires. For all his assurances and boasts about his health, the extensive hike and the fights with monsters had left him pale and trembling in the torchlight. But for his sake, she kept her voice light as she said, "The score stands thirty-seven to twenty-nine in my favor, 'Lazul. You owe me dinner at that bistro in Lumina."

Elazul only let out a breathy laugh and did not counter or argue. That merely proved to his companion that he couldn't take much more strain.

Glancing back at Tsuta, slithering carefully up the stairs behind them, Rei had an idea. If it worked, it lessened the chances of Elazul keeling over from exhaustion. If not, well, then she'd just have to sit on him or something. "Hey, 'Lazul, hold up."

Leaning against the banister, Elazul glanced over. "What?"

"Let's take a break for a couple minutes, okay? I'm worried about Tsuta. He's not used to all these stairs, and it's a lot harder to climb them when you don't have feet."

Far more intelligent than he looked, Tsuta took that as his cue to coil loosely on the floor once he'd reached even ground, letting out a tired hiss. Elazul looked far from convinced that this wasn't just an excuse to get _him_ to rest, but allowed that the Rattler Boa did look a little worn and it probably would be a good idea to take a break.

He eased himself down onto the floor, leaning cautiously against the railing. Elazul didn't feel much like taking an eleven-story drop just because of time-eaten masonry and a moment of carelessness. Rei followed his example, leaning back against the muscled coils of her pet monster.

For a little, there was only the sounds of breathing and rustling cloth as the trio rested from the long ascent. Then there was a faint jingle as Rei tilted her head and looked ahead to them towards the massive, waiting double doors. "Hey, 'Lazul?"

"Hm?"

"How long have you known Pearl, anyway?"

Elazul closed his eyes, memory taking him back to sand baking under a noon sun and the smell of vegetation in his nose. "A very long time," he said at last.

Pillowing her chin on her knees, Rei closed her own eyes in unconscious mimicry. "Oh. Because I was wondering…has she always wanted to protect people, too?"

Lids snapped open. Elazul stared at the sprite with utter shock. "Where did _that_ come from?"

"Well, it's a lot of little things, you know?" Rei glanced at him sideways, her profile to him. "She goes where the monsters are biggest and thickest and comes through without a scratch. She likes people, likes doing them favors. Like Jennifer and the Marchant's weapons-store. And…I just noticed this recently, so don't bite my head off…but she watches us fight. Watches me fight. I don't think she'd really know how to use them, but I'll bet she could probably do some damage with knives or a sword by now, even without Blackpearl switching in. And, you know, she didn't want tears, back in Mekiv. She wanted to _fight_."

"Your point being?"

"I help people. You help people. Protect them. Pearl does her best to do the same, only she does it differently than you or I do. So I've been meaning to ask you about it, is all."

Elazul leaned back again, once more closing his eyes in order to think better. _Had_ Pearl always been like that? Had Rei seen truly? For the life of him, he wasn't sure. Usually he was too busy chasing down his absent-minded Guardian when she'd misplaced herself or keeping her in one piece when she was with him. And glaring at anybody who tried to get closer than he thought advisable, he added to himself with a wince. Not that that had worked on a certain stubborn knife-fighter…

Who was watching him with a vague air of amusement about her. No doubt she had a good idea of what he was thinking—even without their strange bond that had somehow shrunk back to a thread when he wasn't looking. She was good at that.

He gave up on trying to understand the two most important women in his life and rose, suppressing a wince as the faint scratch still left in his core twinged a little. It certainly hadn't been pleased that he'd just gone through a hell of a lot of monsters, and it had made its' displeasure felt enough that Elazul had—reluctantly—allowed Rei to do most of the fighting.

After all, as intriguing as getting tied to her bed sounded, he had the feeling he wouldn't enjoy it as nearly as much as his libido thought he would.

Rei blinked at Elazul as he suddenly blushed deep scarlet all the way to his eartips. What in Salamander's flames had made him do _that_? "Elazul?" she questioned worriedly, "Are you okay?"

Her best friend coughed, then cleared his throat, hiding firmly behind his bangs. "I'm fine. Is Tsuta ready to go?"

Rei glanced back at her Rattler-Boa and was given an emphatic tail-rattle in reply. "Yep. Let's check that Room out." She made for the ornate, heavy double-doors and was about to push on them when Elazul stopped her with a quiet 'wait.'

"I heard the Door of Fate only opens only to one who knows the person inside," he told her, skin nearly returned to its' normal color. "Pearl is inside. I'll open it."

Under this advice, Rei willingly backed up enough for Elazul to take up a position in front of the Door. With a slow inhale, he braced himself and pushed. _Hard._ And stumbled back with a gasp of effort a moment later when the portal remained firmly closed. "Resist me, will you?" he muttered. "Damn it! Why aren't my memories enough to open the door? Pearl…"

He startled when Rei propped her chin on his un-armored shoulder and considered the blockage before them. "I'd like to point out now that those are some very big, heavy doors," she observed in a reasonable tone. "And you are a wounded, tired, grumpy person who just dealt with a crap-load of stairs and a bunch of suicidal monsters."

"Your point?" Elazul gritted.

"Duh. Let's _both_ open the damned thing. If nothing else, I'll bet that between the two of us we can just break it down."

Elazul resisted the urge to break into a fit of sniggering. Ah, that was his Rei. Practical as always. "What would I do without you?" he chuckled, stepping aside to make room for the sprite.

"I imagine," she replied lightly, "that you would continue being a stubborn idiot."

Their hands pressed against the cold, metal surface of the doors. Muscles flexed. And the doors slammed open with a howl of protest, their force so great that they cracked flakes of stone off the walls just behind them.

Rei stared in amazement, her hands still raised in a pushing motion. Opened her mouth, then closed it again. "Stop looking at me like that," she muttered to her companion, who picked his jaw up from the floor. "I didn't think I'd gotten _that_ strong, okay?"

"That isn't…Rei, you…you…nevermind," Elazul sighed. "I just remembered that I am never, ever, in a thousand lifetimes, going to understand you."

"Um, thanks…I think." Only a bit daunted by this unexpected occurrence—Rei hadn't meant to push _that_ hard, honest!—the trio of Knight, fighter, and monster entered into the dark-shrouded Room of Fate.

It was still hung with a rather clingy darkness around the ceiling—the bloody rag that Rei had used to clean up her arm and hands was even still lying in a rotted, crumpled huddle a few feet past the floor-emblem. After having had an experience with a similar old-as-the-hills room, Rei noticed something that had escaped her attention the last time she was here—there was no dust. Aside from the time-ruined leftovers of a forgotten age, the floors and walls were free of grime and cobwebs.

That, more than anything, gave Rei the same creepy feeling she'd gotten when another time had nearly drowned her in memories.

The room's two occupants didn't notice her or Elazul, or hadn't seemed to have even noticed the resounding crash of the doors opening wide. Pearl and Blackpearl sat together on the golden throne, rapturous green-blue gazing into forbidding aqua. At Rei's side, Elazul hissed softly in recognition, but even that failed to gain either woman's attention. Rei mentally balled up the theory that Pearl and Blackpearl were one and the same and tossed it over her metaphorical shoulder.

"Pearl…" crooned the dark Knight, "Your goal is to reach the stratum of Clarius."

"Yes…" Pearl breathed.

"Pearl…you will become the Clarius."

"Yes…"

"You will succeed Florina and give your life to the race…"

Rei observed that for a cold, stern, ruthless woman, damn, but Blackpearl had charisma in spades. The knife-fighter felt herself half-lulled into a willing daze by that crooning voice, and _she_ wasn't even a Jumi! Elazul, on the other hand, was puffing up more and more like a cat who was about to go after a rival.

Pearl agreed readily to the murmuring voice, right up to the point when Blackpearl said, "You will shed your life as tears, and give it to everyone." That was when the Guardian stopped wearing that dazzled look and instead began looking disturbed.

"You will continue giving your life until it is no more."

"No…" It was the tiniest squeak. Barely there at all. But it still made Rei clutch at Elazul's arm in triumph.

"Listen to me," Blackpearl urged. "It is the best way. She will come back with the Mana Sword and the power of the Mana stone. You must persevere until then."

_She? She, who?_ Rei wondered to herself, knowing that Elazul was thinking the same thing when they shared a confused glance.

"No…I don't want to die…"

"You must!"

Pearl stood, backing away from the throne and shaking her head vehemently. "No!!"

_Cue protective Knight,_ Rei chuckled in her head as they ran forward. Elazul immediately put himself between Pearl and Blackpearl, glaring at the dark Knight with all the fierceness that over a century of mother-chocoboing had instilled in him.

"Stop it!!" he yelled. Rei winced as the acoustics made it far louder than it had been intended.

Rising with deliberate grace from the throne, Blackpearl studied the Jumi youth while Pearl made a glad sound on seeing Elazul about as far from dead as he could get. "Jumi of Lapis Lazuli," the black Knight informed him, as coldly as she did anything, "you need not interfere."

"Pearl is my partner!" Elazul corrected angrily. "So I have every right to!"

Blue-green eyes narrowed in warning. "Back off, or you will die."

Standing a few feet behind him, Rei merely rested her hands on the hilts of her knives and let her easy stance speak for her. _Not if I have anything to say about it, _said her body. Her heart thundered it, her gaze snarled it. Elazul was going to die over her very dead body.

Her companion was no more willing to surrender. "I promised I would protect her," he told Blackpearl, in the tones one reserved for repeating a sacred oath. "I cannot back off!"

Pearl dashed to Rei's side and looked up pleadingly, brown eyes overlarge in a face gone white. "Please!" she begged softly. "Help Elazul!"

Rei growled under her breath and cast her gaze to the ceiling in a request for patience before she frowned at the Jumi girl. "Why does everyone feel they need to ask me to do something I was going to do anyway?" she grumped. "Relax, kitten. That nasty hit he took is the last one I'm letting him get before I give him back to you."

"Foolish death-seekers…" Blackpearl hissed under her breath, glaring at both of the fighters with equal frustration for each. "Well, fine. I do not wish to defile this place. Come, let us fight below."

Elazul agreed with some reluctance, remembering that a battle had _already_ been fought here by the golden-haired sprite following without hesitation just behind him. Blackpearl stopped at the door and looked over her shoulder, then told Pearl to remain in the Room. "Do not worry. Your destiny is predetermined."

"Right," Rei confirmed. "And that will be to remain by Elazul's side for as long as she wants to, living a long, happy, and healthy life that isn't controlled by you."

Elazul stopped just a foot or two away from Blackpearl, turning to smile in reassurance at his Guardian. "Pearl…it's alright. I'll come back for you."

The gentle Guardian gave him a weak smile in return. "Alright." As the group left the room, Pearl called softly, "Take care." The last thing she saw was Rei's arm lifted in reply before the heavy doors swung shut and the white-clad girl vanished.

———

"Like hell you're going to come back up here, you stubborn idiot," Rei informed Elazul in no uncertain terms. The door had boomed shut behind them only a moment ago, and Blackpearl was already moving briskly for the stairs. "You barely managed to make it the first time. Try it again and you'll be doing Sandra's work for her by keeling right over."

"Rei, now is not the time for this," Elazul gritted through clenched teeth. "I'm going back for her when we win."

"You _could_ let me go get her once we put Blackpearl in the dirt," was pointed out. Rather reasonably, the knife-fighter thought.

Halfway down the first flight of many, Blackpearl snorted. "I am not so easy to defeat," echoed back to them.

"That's what Larc said and I kicked him butt just fine, hyped up on blood-magic and all!" Rei shouted back. The matter-of-fact way that Rei threw that piece of information out told Elazul quite clearly just how strongly she felt about this, which was Quite a Lot. After all, the time since she'd nearly had an emotional meltdown about the disaster with the Crimson Dragon could still be measured in days.

He'd feel touched, if he wasn't gripping his temper with both hands and his teeth. "Fine," he growled. "Then what do you suggest to make the trip downwards easier? Because I _am_ coming back up and I won't let you stop me."

Rei opened her mouth to snap back, only to close it again and look thoughtful. "Easier going down? That depends. Do you have a fear of heights?"

"Huh?" Elazul blinked, then replied slowly, "No, not really."

"Good." She grabbed his wrist and proceeded to pull him behind her down to the tenth floor and into the waiting elevator. To the Rattler-Boa, the knife fighter gave instructions to go with Blackpearl and behave himself, because the route that she would be taking Elazul on wasn't suited to giant snakes.

Elazul figured that now would be an excellent time to worry, as Tsuta acknowledged his orders with a calm hiss and slithered off in Blackpearl's shadow once they'd reached the eighth floor. Rei marched herself and her captive over to a hole in the wall, where the protective layers of Mana had worn away enough for the mortar to crumble apart. She leaned out, then let go of his wrist.

"Okay, Elazul," she said with worrying cheer. "Tag. You're it." She dropped out of sight through the hole.

He let out a strangled curse and stuck his head out in time to see Rei land on a balcony at least two floors down. She straightened, dusted herself off, and then the damned woman had the gall to wave cheekily at him before disappearing into the Tower! Elazul swore, grabbed his cloak to make sure it wouldn't catch, and stepped out onto thin air.

She wanted to play Tag? Fine. He was going to strangle her when he caught up for scaring him like that. "Damned idiotic crazy stubborn—oof!—_wildcat_!"

"Sticks and stones may break my bones," echoed from the hallway ahead of him, accompanied by bright chiming, "but slowpokes can never catch me!"

————

Blackpearl raised an eyebrow at the sound of rapid footsteps, voices raised in either cheerful taunting or infuriated shouts. "Your master is a strange one," she said quietly to the coil of muscles nearby. Tsuta flared his hood in agreement, tongue flickering in and out to taste the energies of the Tower.

Blackpearl's amusement faded. The motion reminded her of what she'd sensed in the Room of Fate when the bright-spirited knife-fighter had come in. It was obvious to her that Rei had a strong ability to sense Mana—and it was just as obvious that Rei was clueless as to what that meant.

Those who could _sense_ Mana were just as easily able to _affect_ the flows. It was the payment for being the living, breathing will of the Goddess herself, those meant to bring the world back to better days. It frankly amazed the dark Knight that the Tower still stood on its foundations, when all Rei would have to do to return the twisted energies to their long-forgotten, proper paths, would be to stretch out just a _little_ of her will…

Leires would fall. Blackpearl had no doubt about that. It would not, she decided, be soon. Decades, perhaps. But now she stood within a doomed piece of an old war's bones and knew that she saw the end of it.

And Rei had no idea of it yet. That was the incredible part.

The subject of Blackpearl's thoughts came skidding around the corner on shoes that didn't provide _quite_ enough traction for the stone floor, hair ornaments providing a musical cacophony as she ran from the golden-skinned Jumi youth just feet behind her. Blackpearl felt her mouth curving up on one side despite her resolve to remain stoic; despite running, it appeared that Rei's plot to keep Elazul from wasting energy he didn't have to spare had worked.

She dismissed the thought. Running downhill was always easier than up, if a little more hazardous.

Knives were pulled from their sheaths with a soft hiss as Rei used her momentum to launch herself at the dark Knight. Those strange pipes actually brushed the ceiling at the apex of the leap, before blades met the long handle of a battle-ax with a resounding _chang!_

Blackpearl used that momentum to spin and push Rei over her shoulder—a long, soft scuffing noise told her that Rei had landed on her feet and had slid for at least four yards. Blackpearl's attention was for the stone blade swinging for her head and the massive snake that had coiled itself to strike. The sword was parried and well-practiced footwork gracefully took her out of the strike-path, leaving the Jumi woman with plenty of room to follow through with one of her own attacks.

Elazul's sword shuddered beneath the weight of the hammer as he blocked it, one hand bracing the blade to spread the impact. His core-wound screamed at him—he must have made some noise of pain, because in the next moment Rei was there, driving Blackpearl into giving ground with a whirling flurry of attacks.

It was hard to breathe. The pain had sucked all of his air away, leaving Elazul panting from the sheer _strength_ behind that hammer-blow. How was he going to protect Pearl like _this_?

_"Rule one, boy,"_ he heard a voice from the distant past say, voice rough as sand. _"A Knight's life is his Guardian. If you lose the one you are sworn to protect, it had better be because you're dead and the other guy was just that damn good."_

_"Hurts, don't it, kid? Well, guess what?"_ rasped that voice from another time, though still when he was a Knight-in-training. _"Get used to it. We Jumi don't have our tears anymore. That means that you fight when you're hurt, if you have to. Hell, if your Guardian is in danger, you get your day-old corpse off the ground and protect them. Because Guardians _don't fight. We_ are the ones who have battle hard-wired into us. It's our job to keep our people safe. And by the time I'm done with you, kid, you'll look back on today and wonder how you were ever this much a wimp."_

The voice of his Knight-mentor spurred him just as hard now as it had then, when he was a shiny new hopeful for the ranks of the honored guards. Pain? Pain he could live with. And he would live with it, he thought as he brought his sword crashing down onto the handle of a war-hammer barely raised in time. Because he refused to let his loved ones down, and there was no way he was going to meet up with old man Jadus and tell him that he'd messed up.

The adrenaline-lit grin that Rei tossed him around the flashing of her knives was approving and delighted when Elazul waded into the fight with renewed spirit. Blackpearl merely crooked an eyebrow and kept dodging her three opponents with less and less ease as time wore on.

Open to the lower breezes and weather, the dust that lay in a film across the floor was scuffed and smeared by the time that Blackpearl's defense failed her long enough for both blade-wielders to strike at the same moment. Their force sent her flying back to hit the wall that still bore scars from Rei's long-ago display of temper. Stone cracked like glass as the Knight slid bonelessly to the floor, wheezing.

"Three…against one…" she panted without rancor, eyes half-shut. "Hardly…fair odds."

Rei took that for the surrender it was and sheathed her knives. "I never said anything…about fighting 'fair', Lady Blackpearl," she replied, her own breath a little short. "I don't believe I ever have."

That won her a brief, near-silent laugh as the black-clad woman slowly got to her feet, using the wall to support herself. "True." She glanced over at Elazul, whose sword still gleamed in the torchlight. "Most impressive, Lapis Knight. You choose your allies well."

"We have a deal," he reminded her from between clenched teeth. "You'll leave Pearl alone."

"Yes." Her proud head dipped into a nod before she gave him a cold smile. "For now."

All the tension drained out of Elazul, leaving a heart-sick young man barely old enough for his Knights' spurs to gaze imploringly at one of his people's heroes. "I don't want to fight you anymore."

If Rei was feeling charitable—and she was, sort of, since they'd won—she would be willing to agree that the female Knight's stern visage softened towards the blue-eyed man. "Pearl is mine," Blackpearl told him quietly. "She will come back to me. Face it."

"Pearl will go where she chooses," Rei said into the stillness that grew from Elazul. "We'll be here to make sure of that."

That brought Blackpearl's attention back to the knife-fighter, and once again Rei was looked over with exacting care. After what felt like a lifetime, the dark Knight gave her a considering frown. "He who cries for a Jumi shall turn to stone," she reminded the knife-fighter. "You should be careful. The old saying is true, Rei. Stay away from them."

Rei bristled. "I've said it before and I'll say it again, as many times as I need to before you people understand! If I was going to abandon my friends, _I wouldn't have helped in the first place_. This is _my_ choice, Blackpearl. Mine and mine alone. My friends. I'm helping them. Get used to it."

A real smile bloomed on that stern face; without another word the dark Knight turned and disappeared around the corner that led towards the first set of stairs. After a moment or two, lighter steps echoed off the walls as a white-clad figure came into view from the same place.

Elazul's head lifted in hope. "Pearl…?"

His Guardian smiled. "Elazul…"

Rei piped up. "Oh, good. That means I don't have to have to sit on Elazul. Your turn."

Elazul let out a soft snort, arms already around his heart-sister in a fierce hug of relief. After a moment, he let go and stepped back. "Let's go," he told Pearl.

"Alright."

Rei watched them walk for the door, sheer exuberance at their victory making her forget, for the moment, the wounds that she'd been given at the hands of Blackpearl. But before the two Jumi left, Pearl came up to her and hugged her as fiercely as she'd been embraced. Rei willingly returned the gesture, shaking her head minutely when Pearl whispered 'thank you' into her ear.

"Your home will always be our hearts," Rei whispered back, giving her friend an extra squeeze. As they parted, she gently gripped the white-clad forearms. "Don't forget that, and make sure he gets a chance to sit down soon, okay?"

Pearl nodded, and they were gone.

Rei waited until she was sure they were out of earshot and easy sight before she allowed herself to drop to her knees, clutching her side as the endorphins finished wearing off and informed her in no uncertain terms that hugging people when she had a broken rib was now going under the heading of Bad Idea.

"I hope I don't have to do that very often," she groaned to a sympathetic Tsuta coiled around her. He'd sustained light injuries during the fight, fortunately for Rei. It meant he could keep watch while she fished around for a vial of healing potion or two. "Blackpearl hits like a Du'Cate."

The Rattler Boa agreed with a soft hiss, watching as his master doctored herself. When she rose at last, healing finished, it was with a grin that Rei looked out through the broken doors to the twilight landscape beyond. "See ya later, you two," she said to empty air. "I hope you learn to write better letters by the time we meet again." She glanced down at her pet monster. "Okay, Tsuta. Let's go home."

Air hissed softly as it rushed into the space where woman and monster had been. If anyone other than monsters had been left, they might have heard Leires heave a soft sigh of relief.

————

Happy birthday to meee, happy birthday to meee…


	24. In Search of Faeries

Howdy, ya'll! Cripes, can you believe I haven't updated this in over two months? Sorry 'bout that. _—ducks thrown objects—_ I'll try to keep up a bit more, especially since my job's currently in a quiet period that gives me lots of time to think, if not actually write.

**Meeerf**: A Cancer, indeed. And that really was a confusing part of the game arc; never really got that reference myself. I have loads of fun writing Elazul/Rei, they just work so well together. (And I had far too much fun writing that particular thought of Elazul's. I will try to remember to keep POVs limited in number, or to at least separate them. Might take me a while, I'm in the habit now. Thanks for pointing it out, though!

**aRLegOdDesS**: Hello, welcome, and thank you! Always nice to have new faces around. Please keep coming back?

**Tiamat42**: I think I'm finally breaking through mine. There are some big chunks of rubble still sitting on top of my Yu Yu Hakusho and Okami fics, but the rest is getting cleared away. It's fun writing Xan. And Elazul embarrassing the heck out of himself. The whole non-entity thing in the game bugged me too. I think you only really get three or four real lines out of the whole deal aside from prompts for working out quests.

**Starlight'sDelight**: Perfectionism does have its downsides, doesn't it? It tends to crop up with my artwork instead of my writing, fortunately. Sometimes it's so much easier to redraw than to work out a new way to write. Also, babbling is fine. It tells me stuff. I had that thought about the whole Escad thing, but realized that honestly, the sibs wouldn't have that problem since Xan is usually halfway across the world or more. Lord of Jewels is mildly creepy, yes, but still kinda cool. I like his first transformation best.

**Xenocanaan**: Okay, so it's not really 'soon'…

Okay, I think that's everyone. Thanks again for your patience and the lack of pitchforks and other uncomfortable mob-like objects!

————

Rachel stood in front of Haven Tree's front gate and stared. Black smoke was curling languidly into the air from somewhere behind the house, the breeze carrying an odd, almost sulfuric odor to the sprite girl's sensitive nose. Of all the days for her to convince her mother to send her on a delivery… "Bud?" she called uncertainly. "Rei? Lisa?"

"Just a second!" came Lisa's voice in reply, a heartbeat ahead of her brother's. A few moments later the Elf girl appeared from the back of the property, smutched with soot and remarkably cheerful about it. "Hi, Rachel! What's up?"

"We got in that order of Rei's for some of her usual fabrics," Rachel replied, still staring at the rising smoke. "Why do you have smoke coming from behind your house?"

Lisa waved a hand dismissively. "Oh, that. Rei's been meeting up with people who don't react properly to her instant-healing potions, so she's been spending the last few days trying to make a potion that reacts better to other races. Only she grabbed the wrong jar by mistake this morning, and…well…"

"So she pulled a Bud?"

"Hey!" yelped the aforementioned tamed disaster, walking up. "I'll have you know I haven't blown anything up in months!"

"Basically, yeah," Lisa said, ignoring her brother. "Word of advice? Don't ever mix Virgin's Sigh with Dragon's Breath."

"Ouch," breathed Rachel, understanding now why the air smelled like sulfur.

"Yeah," Bud sighed, leaning against the gate and stretching a little to reach Rachel's cheek with a kiss. "So now the main workroom's trashed and Rei had to go get some more ingredients at Gato. It's okay, though. She'd been spending too much time in one spot, so a little walk should be just the ticket. We'll have the mess cleaned up by tomorrow."

Lisa's face lit up. "Oh! That reminds me! Rachel, could you do us a favor and stop by the glass-blower's shop on your way home?"

"Um, sure. What should I tell Mr. Glace, though?"

"Just 'the usual measurements'," Bud told her cheerfully. "And you can tell him that it's not my fault, this time."

"Would you like to come in for a drink?" Lisa asked, shoving her brother out of the way and opening the gate in invitation.

Rachel smiled. "Sure."

———

"Let's see," Rei muttered to herself as she strode up the rocky trail and into the main part of the village. "Aroma Oil, Greenballs…I _know_ there were some other things I was going to pick up here…Salamander scorch me, what was the rest of it?"

The knife-fighter blinked when she realized that her feet, all unknowing, had carried her right through the village and to the doors of the Temple of Healing. That was odd. She hadn't thought she'd been that much on auto. Huh. But, figuring that while she was here, she might as well visit with Daena for a moment, Rei ambled into the quiet heart of Gato.

It was a less pleasant surprise when Rei found a nun standing guard in front of the doors to the Dreamweaving Room instead of the sharp-tongued cat-woman. The woman's eyes were stern and traced by crow's feet wrinkles at the corners as she looked the startled knife-fighter up and down. And was given a tiny, dismissive sniff that spoke volumes.

_So much over such a young chit?_ Was the unspoken thought that made Rei grind her teeth even as she dipped her head into an abbreviated bow. "Our abbess is calling you. Please go in."

"Right. Thanks."

The Dreamweaving Room was lit as brightly as ever by the sun cascading through the stained glass windows when Rei slipped inside to pad up to the low couch. Matilda lay there as it seemed she often did; the smile of welcome that she gave the sprite smoothed the hackles that had been raised by the nun at the door. It was a much-calmer Rei that bowed politely to the Abbess of Gato Grottoes.

"I apologize for having called upon you," Matilda said in that near-whispering voice of hers, "but there is a favor I need to ask you. It's about Daena."

"I noticed she wasn't at the door," Rei answered, tilting her head to the side. "What happened?"

Matilda's hands were nervous butterflies tracing paths in the air above her ribs. "She left here, saying she needs to talk to Irwin. She hasn't come back since. Could you please find her?"

Rei nodded, her hair ornaments chiming softly. "I'll be happy to. Did she tell you where she'd be going to look?"

"She said she would ask the Faeries if they'd seen Irwin lately, and go from there."

Rei once more bowed, this time in thanks, and bade goodbye to the fragile woman who did not have the strength to look for her friends herself—though it was obvious to anyone with eyes that Matilda desperately wanted to. Rei would be having a chat with Daena—and possibly Irwin and Escad, too, for good measure at some point—about making the ones who loved you worry.

But first she had to find the cat-girl.

———

Rei went to Lake Kilma first via teleportation since it was the closest place she could think of that had Faeries floating around. Rosiotti's jungle home was out; the knife-fighter sincerely doubted that the magical creatures would have returned to a place where a number of them had been slain all at once. She'd check out Fieg and the other places later if the lake didn't pan out.

She didn't see anyone besides monsters until she'd wandered back up to the promontory that was Toté's look-out, where the turtle-sage was once again gazing out across the crystalline waters. "Grandfather Toté?"

"Do you know how we differ from the Faeries?" he asked her without turning around. His voice was quiet, barely audible above the sound of the wind that always blew here, and carried no other tone but that of a teacher asking a pupil a question.

Rei blinked. The first answer that popped into her head, 'our bodies', didn't seem to matter much. Everyone had hearts, they breathed and hoped and dreamed. Why should the physical shell matter? After struggling for a moment or two longer, she finally admitted, "I don't know. How are we different?"

His face turned into a mask of wrinkles as he smiled at her at last. She had a feeling that he'd followed her thoughts anyway, whether or not he'd been watching her. "We are really all the same. Our appearances are only the shadows reflecting on the lake's surface. It's a little difficult for me, too."

"Is not," Rei shot back affectionately. "You wouldn't say such things if you didn't understand them."

"Too sharp by half, young'un," chuckled the ancient turtle.

Rei smiled. "Grandfather Toté, have you seen the Faeries that live around here? They aren't on the usual paths."

"They've been restless all day," he told her, running a flipper-hand down his worn scarf. "Maybe jumping into a circle of Faeries will send us to the land of Faeries. Then we could ask them ourselves, instead of wondering. A young lady was here a while ago to ask about that."

"Cat-girl, little taller than me? Light brownish fur?"

"That's the one."

Rei gave him a quick hug and dashed down the path towards the other end of the lake, waving as she went. "Thank you, Grandfather! That's just what I needed to hear! Have a nice day!"

A little taken aback at the unexpected gesture, Toté ran his hand over his scarf again and smiled. He'd always liked that young'un. Plenty of spirit to her.

————

Rei jogged along the path into the heart of the woods that skirted the low mountains cradling Lake Kilma, on the lookout for her quarry. Daena hadn't been on the paths leading towards the lake, so therefore she must be on the paths leading away, and there were only so many routes to take through the tangled undergrowth.

At last she spotted the cat-girl standing at a fork in the trails, tail curling restlessly back and forth behind her as bright green eyes studied the possible routes. "Daena!" Rei called as she got within earshot.

Startled, the warrior looked up and gave her friend a crooked smile when the sprite came up to her. "Did you come all the way here looking for me?" she asked.

"Yup. Matilda's worried about you, you know. How long have you been gone from the Temple, anyway?"

"Thanks," Daena said wistfully. "I've been gone a couple of days, I guess. But it seems like I gotta go further. Did you get to hear Toté's story?"

"Mmh. I think I'd like to see the land of the Faeries someday. Maybe in a few years when there isn't so much going on."

The cat-girl nodded. "I came here to see Irwin. I guess it was true that he was hiding in the land of Faeries." She looked thoughtfully down the path that, as Rei knew, led to a dead-end. "Is it Matilda's powers he wants?" Daena wondered aloud, mostly to herself. "Or is it revenge on Escad?"

"Maybe it's something else altogether?"

Daena blinked, realizing that she'd spoken her thoughts out loud. "…Sorry. I don't know why I'm telling you this. Goodbye!"

Rei let out a noise that was half surprise and half irritation when the cat-girl bolted down the path she'd been considering a moment before. "Wait a—! Hey! Cut that out!" shouted the sprite, running after her friend.

———

If there was one thing that Daena had to say about Rei, it was that the sprite woman was _fast_. The temple warrior had to pelt full-tilt down the twisting paths just to put some distance between them and even then Daena knew that Rei was never far behind.

But it was Daena who skidded first into the narrow, dead-end of a meadow to find a very tall, muscular male standing in wait. It was the reddish mane that tipped her off, and the powerful feline legs that ended in some very sharp claws. She'd met no one else in her life with legs like those.

"It's been a long time, hasn't it, Daena?" rumbled Irwin, sounding like he'd met her in a marketplace somewhere, instead of in the middle of a forest.

Dusting her hands off, Daena gave him an exaggerated once-over with a faint smile. "You look all grown up and demonic, Irwin," she told him, making him glance down once at his broad hands and the heavy talons that adorned them. "What are you up to, big guy? You've got all the Faeries on your side."

In response, he tilted his head back a little and tapped his bearded chin with one of those fearsome claws. "Hmmm, let's see…What am I capable of doing?"

"Just answer my question," snapped Daena, dropping all pretenses to take a warning step forward. "Say it! What are you going to do to Matilda? She's been aging too rapidly since she collapsed in the mines! Escad says it's because you took her elemental powers. You are taking away my friend…and I can't do a thing about it!"

For a moment, the fierce mask had softened at the mention of Matilda, only to harden again at Escad. Irwin crossed muscular arms across his leather-clad chest and scowled at someone he'd once considered…an ally, if not a friend. "Well, that's too bad."

"Oh, shut up. Give her back the elemental powers you've stolen!" Hissing, Daena leaped for the male, intent on strangling a surrender out of him if she had to. Instead, she was backhanded halfway across the narrow meadow, to land in a dazed, boneless heap.

Flexing his claws, Irwin lowered the hand he'd raised in automatic defense, sneering at the cat-girl. "Go back and tell Matilda," he commanded her grimly. "Tell her, 'You will see that it was only a dream when everything comes to an end.' "

_Is…he invincible?_ Daena wondered to herself, rubbing gingerly at her bruised jaw as she rose on wobbly feet. The demon-blood gazed at her for a long moment before Daena was forced to blink—when she opened them again, he was gone. In his place was a circle of Faeries, all of them singing something in their high voices. She let out a shout of denial and sprang forward, certain she wasn't going to make it and still hell-bent on trying.

Rei caught up just in time to see Daena land smack in the middle of the circle as the Faeries whirled together into a blur of color and light, and skidded to a halt a mere breath away from a glowing mote of light that hung in midair. Her gloved hand reached out for it before her brain could kick in with a warning sign of 'Bad Idea!', Mana and voices rushing through her as flesh touched light.

The knife fighter stood there, transfixed, lungs compressing from the flood of it, until one clear voice spoke above all the rest. _"Lord Irwin takes away the shadows that exist in us. He makes eternity begin."_

She was released all at once in a flare of magic that flung her back and nearly sent her sprawling. The air rang with a large creature's howl, whipping Rei's head around to stare at the rainbow-feathered, wolf-like monster that was crying defiance to the skies on a nearby spike of rock. It jumped into the clearing with a ferocious snarl, clawing at the dirt with talons as long as Rei's hand.

Rei's first thought was that it was a beautiful creature, though it still couldn't compare to Vadise. The second was a bit more practical: _oh crap look at those _teeth_—!_ The third was just plain silly, as the monster charged and her knives flashed.

_Good thing Elazul isn't here. He'd be having fits and telling me 'I told you so.'_

————

Matilda looked up at the sound of the door to the Dreamweaving Room creaking open, a dusty, scratched, and rather mussed Rei slipping into the Room on wobbly feet. "Whew," Rei said lightly, "who knew a big, feathered dog would be more trouble than a dragon?"

"Are you alright?" Matilda asked, shock lurching her half-up to stare at the knife-fighter.

"If you think I look bad, you should see the monster," joked Rei, taking a cloth out her pack and rubbing at some of the dirt. "But it's nothing a good bath won't fix. It looks worse than it is, really."

Well, half-true, anyway. The pretty monster had sent her tumbling to the ground more than once with a nasty electrical-based attack that was like a Tezzla on Triagran, resulting in what few vials of insta-heal she'd been carrying getting shattered. It had made teleporting here a little tricky, but Rei was in no danger of dying. A bed in a nearby inn or something was in danger of being Shanghaied, that was about it.

Still, no point in scaring the poor Abbess.

Looking quite relieved, Matilda lowered herself back down onto her couch. "Did you find out anything about Daena?" she inquired, making Rei swipe the cloth over a bramble-scratch far harder than she'd intended.

Wincing, Rei coughed. "Um, yeah, about Daena. She's…well…I caught up to her over at Lake Kilma, but…She sorta went to…well…"

Matilda took pity on her. "She went to the land of the Faeries?" Rei nodded. "Does that mean that Irwin is there, too?" Rei opened her mouth to answer, but Matilda shook her head. "No. I should not ask you anymore. Thank you." Matilda turned her gaze to the ceiling, a sad smile pulling at her lips. "…I used to see Faeries quite often myself, you know," she told the knife-fighter softly. "But Escad could not, so used to make faces when I was speaking to them. We were talking about that when he was here just now."

Rei's teeth creaked, she clenched them together so hard. She would _not_ say anything against the man. Even if he _was_ utterly infuriating.

Matilda kept going as though she hadn't noticed. "He says he can somewhat see them now. Perhaps they still live around here?"

"I've seen them down at the waterfall, near where the Cancun bird nests," Rei offered, remembering that trip. Calmest one she'd ever take with Niccolo, she was sure of it. "I spoke with them while Niccolo was off chasing Greenballs."

Matilda gave her a stronger smile. "Thank you, Rei. I appreciate everything you've done for me."

Rei shook her head. "I don't do anything anyone else wouldn't do. And don't worry—I'm sure everything will turn out okay." Waving, the knife-fighter turned and walked out, intent on hunting down that unsuspecting bed for a nice long nap. If she'd known about the conversation that was about to take place, nothing would have been able to get her out of that room short of another Drakonis—and even then, it would have to have been a damn good mattress he would have needed to tempt her with.

The Abbess of Gato Grottoes had barely begun to let the tears caused by Rei's honest, optimistic reassurance flow when a male's soft voice echoed from the high ceiling. "Matilda."

Her hands flew away from her face, and she stared up into the deep blue eyes of a crowned sprite hovering near the ceiling. He was dressed in golden shades and brown tones, and if that wasn't strange enough, a trailing wisp of fog was wrapped around the prongs of his crown. Around his shoulders was a mantle made from more fog, this tinted the soft shades of dawn.

"Who might you be?" breathed Matilda in amazement.

The sprite man smiled gently, swaying back and forth in a low arc. "We haven't seen each other for quite some time, Matilda. Don't you remember me? My name is Selva."

Utter shock made the aging woman's voice as squeaky as a child's. "Selva of the Four Winds? One of the Wisdoms?"

Amusement warmed the rich voice. "Yes, I used to visit you when you were an infant. And I know you well."

"Then you know about how Irwin took away my elemental powers?"

"Yes, I do," admitted Selva easily. "When an era is about to end, anything can happen."

Matilda's eyes widened in their maze of wrinkles. "The era's end? You can…see the future, sir? What will happen to Irwin and Escad?"

Selva shrugged. "The future is decided by those who will walk its path. You, Daena, Escad, Irwin, Elazul, Pearl, Larc, Sierra, Xan…"

"…And Rei?" finished Matilda softly when the list of names trailed off.

"You thought so, too?" Selva sounded pleased. "I wanted to hear that."

Matilda covered her mouth with her hands in dismay. "Oh, I cannot say anything about what the Wisdoms have decided!" she squeaked, voice muffled behind her fingers.

Selva swayed again through another low arc. "Olbohn the Warrior, Gaeus the Earth, Rosiotti the Beast, Toté the Tortoise, Pokiehl the Bird, and Selva of the Four Winds," he recited cheerfully. "You shall become the seventh member of the Wisdoms."

The Abbess wondered how many shocks her heart would get today. "Why choose me?"

Another easy sway. "You are the one who will end this era," the Wisdom explained, still smiling kindly.

Matilda gulped back a sob. "…Yes, my selfishness has caused chaos. I…loved Irwin," she admitted at last. "Please allow me to die this way," she added, pleading. "It is for the world."

The crown glittered when Selva shook his head. "Matilda, you are allowed to love anyone you want," he scolded, voice soothing and soft. "People feat to see the shadow they make themselves. But there is no such thing as shadows. You understand, don't you?"

"…All my life I've only seen the shadows," Matilda whispered, her eyes snapping open when an image of Rei popped into her head. The only shadow Matilda could ever see around that young woman was the one that was tied to her heels.

"See only the future," intoned the Wisdom hovering comfortably near the ceiling, smiling as though he knew precisely what she was seeing. "The guilt you feel only locks your heart. Open your heart, Matilda. Forgive yourself."

Matilda was silent, seeing again that cheery smile and careless wave. _"Don't worry—I'm sure everything will turn out okay."_

_Don't worry,_ said the silence between Rei's farewell words. _I'll find them for you. I promise._

Selva chuckled from his place above Matilda, amusement glowing in the depths of his eyes as he declared, "The flow of time is about to change its way. People will become free."

————

Rei stretched as she followed Bud into the house. She'd finally found the locations of all six Wisdoms and they'd actually stayed put long enough for her to bring Bud to them. There'd been some backtracking involved; it had, after all, been almost a year since this particular project had been started and they'd both lost track of who Bud had talked to or hadn't.

They'd revisited Gaeus and Olbohn to make sure they hadn't missed them. The Living Hill had told Bud about an adventure he could expect to have in about seventy-five years with a Jumi Knight—which had startled master _and_ apprentice—and the first thing out of Olbohn's mouth when Bud had popped into his office had been "Oh, no, not you again. That pipe-haired terror is with you, isn't she? Make her go away."

_Always nice to know when you've done a job well_, Rei snickered to herself as she kicked off her shoes, Bud whistling cheerfully from the cottage's small kitchen where he was digging for a snack. She sobered for a moment, remembering her brief visits with the shades of Rubens and a still-stubborn Esmeralda, before forcing her soul to skip a little lighter.

Esmeralda had forgiven her. Rubens had been pleased to see her. And there hadn't been so much as a whisper of any other Jumi joining those on that corridor.

Not to mention, she was _home_. Back to her own bed, fresh food, and most importantly… "I have dibs on the shower."

Bud made an indifferent noise and called that Lisa had left a note about going into town for some gardening tools. Rei gathered up her washing things and headed into the bathroom for that much desired shower.

The warm water pounded against the back of her neck as she leaned against the wall and let herself drift. Pokiehl, well, Pokiehl she'd known they'd already talked to, confusing bird that he was. Toté and Rosiotti had been pleased to see them, but hadn't offered much of anything new to the aspiring mage or his teacher.

But Selva…

The Wisdom that rode the winds of the world had talked the normal Wisdom-babble to Bud, telling her student that his memories of childhood would help with his magic as he grew older. Rei could attest to that; some of her niftiest ideas had come from things she'd wanted to do when she'd been a little girl. It was what he'd told them afterwards that had Rei thinking very, very hard.

_"Do not fear the future. The flow of time is about to change its way. People will become free."_

Rei gently bonked her head against the wall. Goddess, but she wished that Wisdoms wouldn't always talk in Flammies-blest mysteries!

————

Never let anyone tell you that pestering Wisdoms is not fun. You just have to make sure you pick the right Wisdom to pester.


	25. Alexandrite

Hi, ya'll! Once again, apologies for making you wait. Reality is a pain in the butt to get away from, as are the LOK vampire plot-bunnies. It seems I'm falling into a pattern of updating every two months, though, so as long as I can keep that up, I'll probably be able to avoid the oddly-absent lynch mob.

Also, a blanket thank-you to everyone who has been favoriting _Paths_ and _Tales _and has gotten this far in this story. You are not forgotten, I'm just lazy.

**Xenocanaan:** Welcome back! And thanks!

**aRLegOdDesS: **That's alright, he's in this chapter, which ought to make everyone happy. Thanks for reviewing again, I'm always happy to get these.

**Meeerf:** We do the sync thing a lot, I've noticed, Tiamat and I. Answers to questions: 1) Rei is in her early twenties, no older than twenty-two or thereabouts. I haven't quite decided yet. Xan is in his mid-twenties, about twenty-six since he's four years older. 2) 'shadow tied to Rei's heels' was referring to Rei's actual, physical shadow (or as physical as ordinary shadows get). Nothing mystical or anything. 3) "pipe-haired terror" is pure me. I laughed quite a bit when it popped up in my head. Hope your party went well!

**Tiamat42:** Don't worry, I understand completely about space-case-itis. I usually have a severe case of it myself. The insta-heals aren't necessarily for the Jumi, more for the other people—like Akravator's dragoons—that don't have the same physiology as a sprite or human. But Rei won't be complaining if it works on Jumi too. As for the relationship between Matilda and Irwin, I only ever felt sorry for them. Both of them trapped by lives they don't want because they can't see far enough to break the rules.

Swinging onto your less-serious note, I must agree: picking on Wisdoms should most definitely become the new "in" sport for Fa'Diel.

On to the fic!

————

Check the straps to her pack. Note the worn spots and contemplate for a few moments on making herself another. Make certain that her knives are in their hip-sheaths, her panpipes in their belt-case. Stuff Elazul's letter in her pocket and head downstairs.

"Bud! Lisa?" Rei called as she padded down the stairs and into the main room. She got answering calls from different parts of the house and yard, and called back with, "I'm heading out for that trip with 'Lazul and Pearl. You know the drill."

Bud's voice was absent-minded irritation as he yelled for her to stop distracting him during spell-crafting. Just because he hadn't blown anything up in months didn't mean he wanted to break his winning streak. Rei just rolled her eyes as she went out the door and emerged into the late summer sunshine.

It had been a little more than two weeks since that mess at Leires, far less since Daena had disappeared to (presumably) the Land of Faeries, so Rei hadn't expected a letter from the two Jumi for at least another week or so. Let alone one that asked her to meet them today in Amanda and Barrett's pub.

Rei had to give her stubborn friend credit; he had actually written something that was able to be called a letter, though most of it was still Pearl's graceful handwriting that tended to drift towards the lower corner. And he asked her for so little that she had immediately sent off a short reply agreeing to meet them.

Taking one last deep breath, the knife-fighter vaulted her front gate and ran up the road to Domina.

———

Dusty from the road between Domina and her home, Rei stood in the dim main room of Amanda & Barret's pub, feeling a surge of pure relief at the sight of two familiar figures in the far corner closest to the fireplace. Holding out her hands in welcome, she approached the equally-relieved Pearl and Elazul, both of them smiling back.

"You're okay," Rei said happily, looking both of her friends over in careful scrutiny. They were about as dusty as she was, though you could never really tell with that buff-colored cloak Elazul always wore. "I'm so glad—I wasn't expecting a letter quite so soon."

"I thought you would worry about Elazul," Pearl replied in her usual, absent-minded tone. "And we had a favor to ask you. Well, Elazul does, anyway."

"I want to visit Diana in Geo," Elazul cut in, his own relief at seeing her whole clear in blue eyes and voice. "I was wondering if you could take Pearl."

Rei lifted an eyebrow. She remembered Diana, having met the Diamond Jumi when she and Esmeralda had been looking for the cores of the cheerful girl's lost sisters. She tried to hide the sorrow that still chewed on her heart at the thought of the girl she'd failed to protect, but judging by the way Elazul and Pearl looked at her, she didn't do too well. "You want me to take Pearl to Geo?" Elazul nodded, and she shrugged back, smiling down at the slightly-smaller Jumi girl. "All right."

Gratitude shared space with relief in Elazul's eyes. "Thank you. I feel safe, knowing you're watching over her."

_Pearl's about the _only_ Jumi I've ever managed to protect, yourself included,_ Rei thought to herself, feeling another pang. _That's putting a lot of faith in me, 'Lazul._

But the green-haired young man had already turned to his Guardian, giving her shoulder a quick, reassuring squeeze. "There's a place I have to visit, first, so you go on ahead. Pearl, be careful."

"You worry too much, Elazul," Pearl replied affectionately, wrapping her fingers around the hand on her shoulder and giving it a squeeze back. "I'll be with Rei, so I'll be fine. Go on, we'll meet you in Geo."

Nodding, Elazul brushed past Rei with another of those relieved smiles of his and disappeared out the door into the sunlight. Pearl looked up at Rei, who was gazing after the Knight with a troubled expression. "He's a lot quieter than usual," the knife-fighter observed softly. "None of his usual threats and dire warnings."

"He meant what he said," Pearl told her, some of her dreaminess slipping away. "No matter how often I get in trouble, you've _always_ kept me safe. Elazul thinks it's his fault that he failed to protect Esmeralda, not yours. And he doesn't blame you for what happened in the caverns."

Rei's shoulders rose and fell in a long sigh before she reached out to ruffle Pearl's long brown hair. "I'm glad he doesn't," she said mournfully as they emerged together out into the sunshine, "but Esmeralda's death _was_ mostly my fault." Her hands stretched out, grasping at empty air. "If I'd just grabbed her the second I figured out it was a damned note, then she wouldn't have just…just _bolted_ on me. I could have kept her safe if she'd just stayed by my side."

Pearl captured one of those hands reaching so hard for 'what if' and held it, feeling the ridges of scars both old and new beneath her touch. "And there's the real truth of it," the Jumi girl said softly. "If Esmeralda hadn't run off, things might have turned out differently. Would you blame her for going somewhere that meant 'safety' to her?"

The knife-fighter regarded her friend in hurt shock. "No! She thought that the teachers at the Academy could protect her! And that's what I don't get, Pearl, is _why_ couldn't anyone in that whole damned school keep one Jumi safe! Nunuzac's supposed to be this powerful conjurer, right? How in the name of the Goddess could he have let Sandra take her?"

Pearl could feel the anguish and fury in the other female as Rei made several abortive gestures towards her knives with her free hand, but the one in her grasp only trembled from the force of the chained emotions. She gave it a gentle squeeze. "I don't know, Rei. But you can't take all of the blame for yourself, not when so many made the mistake. Not when it was Sandra who made the choice in the first place."

For a moment Pearl thought that she'd pushed too far, lanced the heart-wound poisoning her friend too deeply, as Rei stopped in her tracks with her head bowed low. For a moment, Pearl was afraid that Rei would cry and turn to stone.

But then the knife-fighter raised dry eyes to give her a weak, wobbly smile. "Good point. We all screwed up. I'm still going to blame myself."

Pearl gave Rei a sympathetic smile and tugged her into walking again. It would take them until evening to reach Lumina and the beds they would find there. Half a week to get to Geo. But for now, she had her friend safe, and was safe in return. "Rei, if you didn't feel guilty you wouldn't be called a 'good guy'. Now come on, you promised me that if we were ever in Lumina together you'd take me to meet that lamp-maker friend of yours."

Rei resisted the tug, an honest smile lighting a faint spark of pride in her eyes. "Don't bother pulling on me then," was what she said as the hand Pearl held curled to hold in return. "Just close your eyes and hang on. I finally got the hang of that transportation spell."

———

Rei nodded to Kristie as the two young women walked into the Palace of Arts in Geo. They had spent the afternoon in Lumina yesterday, Rei introducing the shy Jumi girl to the spunky Siren who was once more hard at work in her lamp shop. Pearl had oohed and ahhed over the softly-glowing creations that filled the shelves, each with its own quirky personality, and had enjoyed talking to their equally-quirky creator, Monique.

Rei had taken the opportunity to apologize for not dropping by as often as they'd agreed upon last year; Monique had only laughed and told her that it wasn't truly needed any longer. People were coming from as far away as Fieg these days to buy her lamps—so many that she was considering the hiring of an apprentice to help her keep up with demand.

The knife-fighter had also told her spunky friend about Gilbert's poor luck in getting turned into a statue at the hands of Kathinja. Monique had looked upset at the news, but had breathed a sigh of relief when Rei assured her that, although he was currently stone, Gilbert wasn't in any true danger, nor was the spell permanent. Rei just wasn't sure where to find a strong enough counterspell against it. She was looking, though, in the less-frequent moments of her spare time.

Spare time. Hah. Like Rei even _had_ that anymore between business trips and keeping up with her apprentices. Darn it, _she_ was supposed to be running _them_ ragged, not the other way 'round!

But that was yesterday. Today Rei had the pleasure of watching Pearl's mouth drop open at the sight of the bronze statues that stood around the broad entrance hall. The knife-fighter grinned. "Yeah, that was pretty much my reaction. Check it out; that one's a statue of the Mana Tree." She pointed to one statue on Kristie's right, near a hulking gladiator with his weapon raised.

"Amazing!"

"I thought so, too," Rei agreed as she led the way towards the basement steps. "It's one of my favorites here in the Palace. One of these days when we're not here on business I'm going to have to bring you back here for the grand tour. Sotherbee knows every inch of this place and does great as a tour guide."

"Thank you, Miss Wei," chirped the aforementioned little fellow from his usual post by the entrance to the rest of the building. Rei waved to him as the two young women disappeared into the dusty, dim cave of the basement.

What they found there shocked them. Rei had been expecting to find the cool, elegant Diana waiting for them up on her pedestal. She found instead a glittering crystalline statue of the Jumi Guardian, carved face expressionless in what little light there was to be had. The knife-fighter was so taken aback that she halted in mid-step to stare upwards.

Pearl bumped into her from behind and murmured an apology before she noticed Rei's frozen astonishment. She stood on tiptoe to peer around her friend, mouth forming a silent 'oh' in understanding. "Diana…crystallized?" came her soft murmur as she inched by for a closer look. The Jumi girl ran light fingertips up one stone arm and rested for a moment on the gleaming, sparkling piece of cold fire that was Diana's core, safe and sound in its place. "What should we do, Rei?"

Her name snapped the knife-fighter out of her daze and let her plant both feet solidly on the floor. "Well, I know we don't need to panic yet," was the shaky reply. For a moment she'd thought that they'd been too late before she'd remembered that Jumi whose cores were stolen didn't turn to stone; they simply vanished. "Diana's alright, if not quite the way I left her. And there hasn't been rumor of a note so the jewel hunter can't be here."

Pearl nodded, accepting the words that had been meant to reassure their speaker as much as Pearl herself. "So we're all right," she agreed. "After all, you're with me." The spontaneous hug that won her from her friend made her smile; such gestures were still rare, especially after the loss of Esmeralda. Returning the hug, Pearl said, "Alright! Let's go ask those two up there what happened."

It was a willing knife-fighter that followed the Jumi girl up the steps and back into the bright world of the surface, and who took up a place near Pearl when the Jumi went over to talk to Kristie. Green eyes flickered around constantly, because for all of her reassurances Rei knew that Sandra had to be nearby. And she was determined that the jewel hunter would not succeed again.

"Excuse me," Pearl said as her friend went into high alert somewhere just behind her. "Do you know why Diana turned to stone?"

Kristie blinked, a gesture that was echoed by the two large eye-jewels pinned up in her elaborate hairstyle. "Diana?" she echoed blankly. A heartbeat later her face cleared. "Oh, you mean that diamond Venus statue. I don't know either."

"I once heard that Jumi who close their hearts off turn to stone," offered Sotherbee in a helpful tone. "Perhaps that is what happened?"

Rei blinked as Pearl propped her hands on her hips, startled by the sudden appearance of a much-sterner personality than she was used to. "That's not right," Pearl told the confused butler in a firm voice that was totally uncharacteristic for her. "It's a ceremony of choosing partners. One Jumi first gathers keys of the heart. Then the Jumi awakens a stone Guardian in order to become her Knight."

"She," declared Kristie in her slow drawl, "is acting weird."

Sotherbee perked up, figuring it out. "It's one of _them_, madam," he squeaked. "A Jumi."

All of Kristie's languor vanished as the female basilisk sat up with sharp interest. "What? She is?"

Rei grinned as the new, firmer attitude vanished under the scrutiny, leaving a red-faced Pearl to clap her hands over her mouth in dismay. _There_ was the Pearl she knew and loved. Blushing furiously, Pearl quickly stammered a denial and turned to the golden-haired sprite. "You're looking for keys of the heart, right, Rei? Okay, let's go!"

And she chivvied them out the front doors as Rei's warm laughter pooled in the corners of the entry hall.

"Smooth, Pearl, very smooth," grinned the sprite woman once they'd reached the main street of Geo. "I doubt they suspect a thing."

Pearl blushed a deeper shade of crimson, batting at her friend as they walked towards the marketplace in search of some shade to escape from the late summer sun. The two fell into silence for a few minutes until Rei spotted the sign for the instruments shop that she'd been meaning to visit since the day she'd talked to Kathinja's students. With a quick word the knife-fighter guided them both into the cool, dim exterior—and her eyes fell on a gleaming golden key sitting out in plain sight on one of the display drums.

"Pearl, is that…?"

Pearl's eyes lit in recognition. "A key…!" she breathed, a shiver of light rippling from her core. "And my core is shining! That _must_ be a key of the heart…"

Rei needed no other encouragement to scoop the pretty bauble up to get a closer look. It was one of those old-fashioned keys, obviously meant for a large, uncomplicated lock; it nearly glowed in Rei's hands as the small gem set in the filigree top winked up at her.

No one noticed the quiet voice that murmured, _"This is the key of pain. Just a part of Diana's heart."_

Instead, Pearl had focused a bemused look at the key resting in her friend's hands. "But I don't think this is the only one…" she said softly to herself. "How strange…Why do I think so?" Her core flickered twice and she nodded as if listening to something beyond Rei's own hearing. "Two more to go."

Rei looked up at that. "You're sure?"

Pearl nodded. "Yes. I'm not sure how or where we should look next, though."

"I wonder…" Rei was thoughtful as she closed her eyes to pin down the idea niggling at her. "I wonder if they're called to places where power lies?"

"Power?"

Rei gestured at the instruments lining the walls. "These are all enchanted pieces. Every single one of them was made with the power of one elemental or another. What if the other keys can be found where other such sources of Mana have gathered?"

Pearl thought about that for a moment before she made a noise of agreement. "It's a sound theory to work with, which is more than what we had a minute ago. Where do you suggest we go?"

Rei strode purposefully out of the shop. "Follow me."

———

Mephianse looked up from his papers when a familiar blond head poked around the doorway of his office. It had been a while since he'd seen her; not since that tragic incident below the Palace of Arts involving the jewel thief and one of the students, if he remembered correctly. She seemed a little careworn and less infernally cheerful than she had been, but she appeared to have found herself another companion to travel with.

Or so he guessed when a light brown head peered shyly around the blond, aquamarine eyes lighting. "A key to her heart!" said the stranger, darting into the room and up to the far corner of his desk to where a golden key sparkled and shone.

"Pearl, you should really ask permission before you go barging into someone's office," Rei scolded half-heartedly, looking to Mephianse for a nod or something.

He willingly gave it, looking to the one addressed as 'Pearl'. "Can you see it?" he inquired, mildly curious. The key had appeared on his desk a few days ago and had persisted in acting as a paperweight no matter how many times he'd shifted it to a drawer or letterbox.

Pearl nodded, key already clasped to her chest. "Um…" she ventured, "can we have this?"

Mephianse waved a heavy-nailed hand in dismissal. "Go ahead, take it. It means nothing to me." And if it meant getting something like that _out_ of his office before one of the more reckless students found it, then all the better. _Especially_ if it was related at all to the Jumi. He did not need Nunuzac dropping any further into depression.

Pearl in the meantime thanked him and paused, head tilted as an uneasy expression flickered through her dreamy eyes. "I feel…like I'm being watched. But just one more to go…I guess."

Mephianse did not bother to watch them leave. He had more important things to do than keep an eye on two young women, no matter how much trouble liked following at the heels of one of them.

———

The last key was not actually in the city itself, but on the terrace just outside the main gates. Rei remembered a scorching afternoon and a blaze of light and mentally chided herself for being surprised. Turning someone to stone must leave quite the stain of magic, so it made sense that the third key of the heart would be lying where Kathinja had stood all those months ago.

Pearl scooped it up with a sigh of relief, holding it up to the light. And for the third time she heard a voice that was from no place she could discern that told her, _"This is the key of pride. It's just a part of Diana's heart."_

Pearl turned to the knife-fighter shading her eyes against the sunlight. "Did you hear something?"

Eyebrows raised, Rei shook her head no. "Nothing but the winds. Why?"

The Jumi girl fidgeted. "Maybe it's my imagination," she said at last. "It looks like this is the last one. Let's go see Diana."

But when the two pattered down into the Palace of Art's basement, they found Diana gone, her pedestal empty. Rei's heart was skipping madly and in a very unpleasant fashion as she and Pearl sprinted back up the stairs to talk to Kristie and Sotherbee.

"The Venus statue," Rei ground out between clenched teeth. "Where is it?"

Elegant eyebrows lifted as Kristie gave her a measuring, artfully casual look and shrugged. "We moved the Venus statue to the arena below. There's a new shipment of pieces coming in tomorrow and we needed the room."

Rei didn't even respond to the hint of challenge in the basilisk woman's eyes; it was Pearl who bobbed a thank-you as she chased after Rei as the knife-fighter disappeared back into the gloom. It was only when they found the crystalline shape of Diana in the darkened arena underneath the basement that Rei drew her first steady breath in minutes.

Pearl was looking around her with her nose wrinkled in displeasure. "What a lousy place…" she muttered to herself, seeing only cold, rough stones and the few torches that had been left to burn on the walls.

A warm, welcome voice echoed out from the stairwell, making both women start in surprise. "Did you find the keys to her heart?" inquired Elazul, coming forward into the light. Rei couldn't help but wonder at the perfection of his timing as one hand drifted down to wrap itself around the hilt of a knife in echo of her suspicions. It was too pat, too perfect…oh, who was she kidding? There was a piece of her soul with Elazul's name written on it that grinned like a cat that had made off with a whole can of cream when those blue eyes of his met hers. Sandra was good, but she would never be able to fool _those_ instincts.

Meanwhile Pearl had gone to hug him, smiling just as happily as that weird link was at the sight of him. "Elazul! Were you looking for them, too?"

The Jumi Knight nodded, hugging her back for a moment before offering an approaching Rei a crooked half-smile. "Hi."

"Hello, yourself," she replied steadily. The half-smile faded a little at her lack of exuberance and the Knight straightened out of long-ingrained habit. "How did you get here so soon?"

The quirk of his mouth bloomed into a full smile. "The same way you did, I imagine. You didn't think I was watching you so closely during those teleportations just because you looked good casting them, did you?"

Rei's mouth twitched. Score: Elazul. "All right, smart ass. Tell us what's going on here if you're so smart."

Elazul's gaze pulled itself to the glittering statue as all merriment fled. "Before Diana could meet us," he said softly, "she turned herself into stone to avoid being killed by the jewel hunter. Try a key."

Pearl looked to Rei, who lifted an eyebrow in reply and pulled out the one and only key that she had picked up, to touch it against the point of fire that was Diana's frozen core. The tiny star of light winking on the key's emerald accent blazed into a nova that forced Rei's eyes shut against it. A rippling arpeggio rang a song of freedom against the knife-fighter's Mana senses as the key vanished from her hand.

Blinking away the spots, Rei found Diana gazing at her in utter serenity. "You found my soul," she murmured, voice approving. Looking around her, the Diamond Jumi spotted the other two and nodded greeting. "Thank you all for coming."

Cores flashed in greeting. Within a heartbeat or two Rei, Elazul and Pearl had all gathered in front of Diana, the Lazuli Knight speaking first. "What did you want to tell us, Diana? The truth about the jewel hunter?"

The elegant coif dipped in reply. "Yes. But first I must explain the jewel hunter's motive, revenge against the Jumi."

"Revenge?" breathed Pearl, eyes going wide.

Diana nodded again, then turned her head to stare unblinking at Rei. "You too will listen, right?"

The knife-fighter shrugged, resettling her blades on her hips. "I don't know why you think I wouldn't after I've come this far."

That won a tiny smile from the woman before them. "Very well. In ages past, the Jumi were once called the race of friendship. This was because they tried to preserve themselves by giving tears to the wounded. Tears composed of life itself..."

Pearl shivered a little at that as a fragment of memory settled into place. "Tears of healing…Teardrop crystals."

But when the age of massive Jumi hunting was over," Diana continued as though she hadn't heard, "...they changed to preserve themselves. So that they could no longer cry, nor give life to others. And so the Jumi cut themselves off from other races and lived hidden in a city of their own."

"The Bejeweled City?" asked Elazul.

Diana sighed at the name. "Yes."

_"And then she kidnapped Florina," _rang Sandra's voice from the dark-clad rafters near the ceiling, _"the only Jumi who could still heal with tears, and started a war with Deathbringer!"_

"The jewel hunter!" squeaked Pearl before Elazul yanked her behind him, his sword hissing from its sheath.

"Sandra!" snarled the Knight in fury, echoed by the sprite growling audibly beside him. Diana only stared up into the shadows with her hands clapped over her mouth in growing panic.

_"Quite a woman. Started a total war with Deathbringer using Florina as a sacrifice. That's right. As long as we had Florina's tears, the Jumi were invincible. So what will become of Florina?" _Sandra's voice was mocking even as Rei searched the impenetrable darkness of the ceiling for some hint of orange or green.

Diana, in the meantime, had pulled her hands away from her mouth in surprise. "That must mean that Florina is still alive," she breathed. "That's wonderful. Bring her here immediately. There children will need her tears."

Stunned at the sheer callousness of those words, Rei broke off her visual hunt to stare at the Diamond Jumi. Surely she hadn't just heard Diana offer up an innocent to an unnecessary death? _I mean, there isn't any war!_ the sprite thought to herself in shock. _Why would they need such a precious thing for scrapes and bruises that aren't caused by anything worse than a potion blowing up in their face? Bud does just fine without them!_

Elazul and Pearl were staring at their leader with similar pole-axed expressions, which didn't make Rei feel any better.

A moment more of silence passed before Sandra's voice came again. _"Why…?"_ asked the hunter in a voice almost too soft to hear. _"Why must the gentle Florina have the life squeezed out of her, only to die?"_

"Such is the Jumi's way of survival," Diana called up imperiously. "Florina does not object."

Sandra snarled, "Shut up!" as she dropped down from her hiding place by use of her grappling hook and reached for Diana's core. "I'll do the same to you!"

"Wait!" Pearl cried, leaping forward around her Knight to grab Sandra's arm. "We mustn't kill her," she told startled green eyes. "We still have to get our tears back."

Elazul stared at his Guardian wrapped around the arm of the person who had murdered so many of his people and wondered when she had gotten so headstrong. "Pearl…"

Pearl hurriedly added, feeling muscles tense under her grasp, "No one is saved through hatred. We must love each other like we did ages ago."

"If so, then why don't _you_ cry?" demanded Sandra, pulling her arm free and shoving Pearl away. "You'll become the sacrifice instead of Florina!" And she flung one of her deadly calling cards at the gentle Guardian. Pearl barely twisted out of the direct path, taking instead a glancing blow across her core as Sandra reached over and ripped Diana's from her chest. She gave Rei one cocky grin as she vanished up the grappling hook, taking her rope and another life with her.

"Diana!" rose from three different throats as those left standing burst into motion. Rei caught Diana before the Jumi woman could hit the ground, Elazul doing the same with Pearl even as Sandra's voice mocked them one more time.

_"Impossible! You couldn't even protect your own Guardian!"_

As Elazul helped Pearl to her feet, Diana looked with clouding eyes up into hurting emerald ones. "One light is hidden by another…" she murmured, reaching up to rest a cool hand against Rei's cheek. "Only Blackpearl can stop her…Find her!"

Rei could only nod helplessly as the woman in her arms incandesced and was gone, leaving a hole in the knife-fighter's heart shaped remarkably like the one that Rubens' death had made. She couldn't even meet Elazul's gaze as they rose, the fading traces of Diana's presence tingling across her fingertips.

The Knight swore under his breath, snatching the brooch off of his hood and smashing it on the ground in a small venting of temper. He didn't pay a hint of attention when it reformed in its place as though he'd never broken it. Pearl knelt at his feet, staring numbly up at her friend who was flexing her fingers as though to get rid of a 'pins and needles' feeling.

Another soft oath drew both women's attention as Elazul knelt down and picked up something that gleamed softly in the torchlight. It was a ring, set with a stone that glowed a bright grass green even in what little light there was. "Look, Pearl," the Knight murmured, crouching beside his Guardian and showing her the gem. "See what Diana left…"

Running the tip of one finger across the faint scratch on her core, Pearl blinked as the shift in light changed the stone from green to purple. "It's a different color…"

"We need to think," Elazul said, mostly to himself but also to Pearl. "About ourselves, Jumi, and the jewel hunter."

"Yes…"

Elazul stood, turning away from Rei to speak in a voice harsh with the tears his body had never been able to make. "You should consider this too, Rei. If you're going to cut us loose, do it now."

Rei thought that she made an admirable effort not to rip up a paving stone to whack him over the head with. Instead, she took a long, deep breath through her nose and watched as Elazul's shoulders hunched in anticipation of a well-deserved shout. "I told Sandra, and I told Blackpearl, and I told Bud and everyone else who tells me to dump the Jumi by the wayside," she replied in as calm a voice as she could manage, "the same thing that I'm going to tell you. And Goddess help you if you ever forget it, Elazul, because if you _ever_ say that to me again I will pound you from here to Fieg and back again. _If I was going to abandon my friends, I never would have helped in the first place. _Moron."

Elazul felt his face grow warm from the unexpected insult, delivered as a stinging rebuke that he knew he deserved. He would have thought a little less of her if she'd taken him up on that offer—but some part of him desperately wished she would.

After all, that would mean she was safe, and not running headlong down a path that would only get her killed.

A path she was on only because he hadn't been able to refuse a hand offered in friendship at a time when he'd desperately wanted help. Foolish, stupid Jumi!

If he could have cried, he would have, then, and he felt grief closing his throat when he admitted out loud, "I…I shouldn't have brought you into this." And his traitorous feet carried him out of the darkened arena.

But not before he heard Rei reply quietly, "Funny, Elazul. I thought _I_ was the one who brought _myself_ into this, all those months ago."

Rei sighed, turning to gaze at Pearl, who for once gazed back without a hint of her usual shyness. "Goodbye," was all the Jumi girl said as she went after her heartbroken knight.

Her friend's voice followed her, spoken into the quiet of the empty arena to rub against stone and the soft hisses of torches alight. "I've seen the others down in Underworld. They haven't given up hope. So why should we?"

Pearl wished she had the answer.

———

So, another piece of the Jumi Arc falls into place. Only a dozen or so major quest pieces left, and a few minor ones, and this story will be finished at last. Can you believe it?


	26. Daddy's Broom

Look! I'm still alive! Has it really been four months since I last updated? Holy crackers. Well, now that I've gotten this troublesome chapter out of the way, hopefully my Muse will get his butt off of vacation and give me a hand with the rest. Thank you, everyone, who has waited for me to get through this chunk of writer's block. Seriously, it means a lot. n,.,n

**Meeerf:** I'm not sure as to which arc will be finished first, the Faerie or the Jumi. I'm tempted to make it the Faerie arc, since my friend Dragonseer declared that the game was over the minute I finished showing her the Jumi one. Can see where her loyalties lie, huh?

As for Pearl and the argument over her hair color, I go off of the pictures I've gotten from the strategy guide and the images from the official page. As far as I can decipher, even if she is a blonde, she is anything but platinum. I still maintain that she's a brunette, so that's what she is in the fic.

The item that is left by Diana at the end of the quest is indeed a ring with a piece of alexandrite for the stone. That's why it changes colors from purple to green. (Or was it green to purple…?) But I guess you already know about the qualities of this unusual stone. n,.,n! Diana's 'key of hate' was only not mentioned because it was in Mephianse's perspective and the game made it seem like Pearl was the only one to hear it.

**Tiamat42: **Well, at least we're both stuck with writer's block. I don't think I've seen anything from you for about as long as I've been slacking. (That's a hint, in case you hadn't guessed. :P ) I do actually have a fragment sitting on my hard-drive involving the choosing of Knights and Guardians. It just wouldn't fit in the last chapter, so I'm hoping to stick it in later. Cross your fingers.

**Xenocanaan:** Um, well, it wasn't soon, but at least I've updated. n,.,n!

**Reiko x 3: **Welcome to the fic! I'm sorry that you caught me on a slow streak; with any luck I'll be updating a bit more regularly. Crossovers are fun, by the way: you might have caught the crossover with Sword of Mana several chapters back. Keep that bit in mind, okay?

———

"Grounded," Rei told her female apprentice angrily as she scrubbed at the trough outside the workshops. "For a month, with _no_ visits to Domina or anywhere else. One week for eavesdropping, one week for running off by yourself, and two weeks for going to the Junkyard _without a weapon_."

Miserable, Lisa only nodded under the heat of her teacher's ire. Her broom, snapped nearly in half, was clutched tightly to her chest as she stood there with her twin. Bud was only there as a kind of emotional support, since _he_ hadn't done anything to frighten their teacher like she had.

"Salamander and Shade, girl, I _know_ how important that thing is to you!" continued Rei, shaking water off of her clean arms. Her arm-guards had already been tossed onto the rubbish heap as casualties of battle—no amount of scrubbing was going to get Shambler-ooze out of the fabric. "And if you'd waited until I'd come back downstairs, we would have gone with you to rescue it! But instead, you didn't think. You ran off without a thought in your head to a place you _knew_ was dangerous!"

And _that_ was the real source of Rei's temper, Lisa knew. She and the knife-fighter had visited the Junkyard only yesterday after they'd gotten one of Xan's letters about it—and had seen for themselves the enchanted doll that called itself Magnolia, the legendary, sentient doll whose eyes were made from Anise's Eyes of Flame.

They'd gone exploring afterwards, wandering through the heaped piles of broken toys, discarded constructs of a long-gone Age. And they'd found monsters of all kinds that had made the place their home as well.

Scarred arms suddenly enveloped the young Elf girl, holding her tight to her shaking teacher. "By the Tree, Lisa," whispered Rei, "you scared the living daylights out of me. I didn't know if we were going to get there in time before something munched you."

"I'm sorry, Master. I promise I won't do it again."

And to think, the day had started out fairly normal…

———

Well, sort of normal. Lisa had practically torn the house and workshops apart looking for her broom this morning, growing more and more frantic as each place failed to yield so much as a splinter or bit of twig. She was hip-deep in the hall closet for the fifth time when Master Rei came shuffling down the stairs, and the Elf girl heard a sleepy—but very startled—voice ask her brother, "Bud? What is one of those constructs doing on the table? Why does it look like you're fixing it, and why hasn't it destroyed the house?"

There came the sound of scraping over the noise Lisa was making as she ransacked the closet, no doubt her brother trying to hide the broken rocking horse behind his back. After a moment there was a softer scrape, audible only because Lisa had emerged from the closet at last to yank at her ponytail in frustrated panic.

"It promised to behave," said Bud from behind her, sounding abashed. "Lisa found it while you two were exploring the Junkyard yesterday and felt sorry for it. She said it was one of the nicer ones, one of the ones that just wanted purpose again."

"But their purpose was war, and that's over and done with," their teacher countered logically. "What kind of purpose could it have _now_?"

Lisa turned around in time to see Bud pat the worn, broken-legged rocking-horse affectionately. "I thought I'd give it to Maree after I fixed it up. You know, the Thatcher's little girl. She's about old enough to have a rocking-horse."

"And it agreed to this?"

"It says it does."

There came a thoughtful noise as Rei pulled a chair out from the table and sat down. "I guess it's not a bad idea," was the slow admittance. The knife-fighter was studying the broken 'horse with genuine interest warming her gaze. "You lot would probably make some damn good protectors for kids and their families. No one would expect some kid's toy to up and whack 'em across the head, let alone some stupid robber." A crooked grin. "And Salamander only knows how much I would have loved to have a toy that talked back when I was a kid."

Bud looked hopeful at that. "So you'll let me fix it?"

Lisa didn't see if her teacher responded with a gesture, as the Elf girl darted into the kitchen to check one more time. But she did hear a casual, "Okay, give it a shot. But I'm gonna be keeping an eye on you for a bit, 'horse. Some of your folk down at the Junkyard aren't so people-friendly. Now, can anyone explain why I have a student ransacking my house?"

Lisa burst from the kitchen, feeling tears beginning to well up. "My broom's gone!"

Bud stared at her with woodshavings in his bangs. "Gone?" he repeated incredulously. "It can't be _gone_, Lisa. You probably just lost it." He said the last with a light-hearted wave of the hand that neither female believed for a split second.

"How could I _lose_ a big broom like that?" Lisa demanded, hands on her hips. "Do you know how hard I've been searching all morning?"

"C'mon, Liiisaaa," moaned Bud, collapsing back into his chair with those melt-your-heart blue eyes just beginning to fill with tears. "That broom is a memento of Dad!"

Rei got up and went to him, patting him on the shoulder in reassurance as she looked to his twin. "And you've searched all of the house?" she wanted to know, trying to confirm where Lisa had looked.

"The whole thing, top to bottom," Lisa replied, adding a trembling of her chin to her brother's glistening eyes. "I was extra quiet so I didn't wake you when I checked your room. I also looked in the meadow, the workshops, the barn and the corral, and the orchard."

Nodding thoughtfully, Rei told them, "Alright. I'll do another sweep around the cottage while you two go check…" she trailed off, eyebrows shooting upwards as Lil' Cactus calmly walked through the front door. Bud and Lisa stared in openmouthed shock at the sight of the spine-ball pattering across the floor to the bottom of the stairs, where it favored them all with a bright little smile before darting up to the second floor.

"The cactus…walks…" Bud managed, all other thoughts driven out of his head for the moment.

"Um, yeah. He does, sometimes." Rei scratched at the back of her neck sheepishly. "Guess I forgot to mention that. Listen, hold off for a second on heading to Domina, okay? I'll go see if Lil' Cactus has seen your broom, Lisa."

"Okay."

Still barefoot, their teacher headed up after the cactus, leaving the two children downstairs. Bud rubbed at his face for a moment before he got out of his chair. "I'll go get a couple more tools from the workshop," he told his sister. "In case that little squirt knows where the broom went. Check around the house one more time, okay?"

Lisa nodded in determination and decided she'd check upstairs in her room one more time. She began to pad up the steps and was just in time to hear the tail end of her teacher's question. "…broom, Lil' Cactus?"

Loud and clear came the piping voice of Rei's houseplant. "Threw away old broom. Junkyard."

The Elf girl froze. The Junkyard? Her broom, the one she'd inherited from her father, was in the _Junkyard_? She had to get it back before some monster went and chewed on it!

———

Rei came down a minute later in time to feel the ripple of Mana that told her of someone using a teleport spell from very close-by. Bud ran in a second later, panic making his hair frizz every which way. "Lisa ran away!" he shouted, wood-working tools dangling from nerveless fingers. "She heard what the cactus did and took off! We gotta follow her, 'cmon!"

The knife-fighter swore and leaped the last few steps as she hurried to get her shoes. "Oi! 'Horse!" she called over her shoulder to the construct still sitting patiently on the table. "I find this house any more a mess when I get back, you're splinters. Clear?"

_:Yes, ma'am!:_

———

_You know, Lees, maybe this wasn't such a hot idea,_ the Elf girl thought to herself as she caught her breath. It couldn't have been more than twenty minutes since she'd left the cottage, but it felt like hours to her poor legs. In her hurry, she'd completely forgotten to grab anything resembling a weapon, including the lightweight spear that Master Rei had made for her and her alone for the twins' birthday last week.

Which meant that Lisa was completely out of options when it came to fighting monsters, since her only tool to channel elemental magic was lying somewhere in the heart of this place. She'd run from every ambush the monsters of the Junkyard had sprung on her, thus her winded state. She was just lucky that the same toys that had helped her and Master Rei find their way about last time were still willing to talk to her.

She'd followed their path since the entrance, ears opened for any hint of where Lil' Cactus had gone or any mention of her broom.

_:I saw a thorny thing with a broom walk deep inside.:_

_:I saw a weird creature carrying a broom bigger than itself. It was green and had lots of thorns.:_

_:That was scary! I saw a cactus wielding a heavy broom and saying strange words. It sounded like leesaleesa.:_

_:I didn't know that cactuses could move! Ya learn something new every day.:_

The last one had been another rocking horse and she'd paused long enough to agree with it emphatically before running on her way, ears plugged to the angry hum of whispers from other forgotten toy soldiers. Now she was good and lost, out of breath, and running low on hope. But she limped on, determined to find her father's broom no matter what.

And as if in answer to that spark of will, there it was! With a joyful cry she hurried towards it, oblivious to the fact that it was lying in the grotto amongst the mounds of trash where she and her teacher had fought Magnolia's helpers just yesterday. Oblivious, that is, until her outstretched hand felt an aura of menace around the worn oak shaft.

"Huh?" Violet eyes wide, she had just enough time for that one startled noise before the aura _pulsed_, flinging her back to land in a tumbled heap on the barren ground several feet away. Skidding along bare dirt, she let out a frightened scream that hardly seemed louder than a squeak.

———

Two heads jerked up at the scream that echoed loud enough to reach the edges of the Junkyard. "Lisa!" Bud yelled back, torn between helping his teacher, who was so close, and helping his sister, who was only Goddess knew where.

"Bud, go!" Rei commanded, parrying another blow from the gooey mass of decomposing plant matter and old pieces of armor and weapons that was trying to take her head off. "I got this covered!"

Rei had to give her student credit; he didn't hesitate another moment, but flung himself headlong up the winding, narrow path through the piles of broken toy soldiers. Which left her with the Shambler. "Okay, big guy," she muttered to herself. "Let's see how well you take to _this_." And she plunged her hand deep into its side, searching for the heart she knew had to be there.

———

Lisa had barely gotten herself picked back up when Bud barreled into the open area, nearly tripping over her in his haste. "Lisa!"

"Bud?" the Elf girl quavered. Disoriented, it took her a second to remember why she was on the ground. "Watch out! There's something here! I think it possessed my broom!"

Bud nodded, looking so much like their teacher in that moment that Lisa's heart gave a lurch of surprise. "Right. We gotta get outta here! Master Rei's just behind me, we'll be safe, then."

Lisa couldn't help what happened next: scraped up, exhausted, with every muscle in her legs one solid ache, she started crying. "I'm scared...Almost all the junk here, like, hates people. And I can't run anymore…"

"Liiisaaaa!" Bud scolded her lightly, grinning. "Did ya forget who I am? I'm Bud the Malignant! Son of Master Magician Hein! Now lemme get that broom and we'll head out." With that, he walked over and scooped up the broom—which promptly showed why Lil' Cactus had brought it here by folding itself nearly in half. The ragged break had left only a thin strip of wood holding the two halves of the shaft together. In a moment of overwhelming frustration that they had come so far, only to have their prize ruined, Bud threw the broom back down with a disgusted growl.

Lisa rubbed at her eyes, staring up at her brother. "But Dad was a dropout at the Academy of Magic…He was so bad, he was only accepted in Domina. We're doomed…The monsters are going to eat us before Master Rei gets here…"

"Lisa!" Bud shouted, whirling to face her. "Don't you remember what Dad always told us?"

Hiccupping, Lisa thought for a few seconds. "Um…He who fights and runs away lives to see the light of day?"

"That's it!" Bud seemed to realize what he'd just said and wilted slightly.

"Cowardice is the better part of valor?" Lisa added, thinking back to the kind, gentle man who hadn't had a single violent bone in his body.

"…Exactly!"

"…So…"

Jerking his head in a sharp nod, Bud declared, "I'd rather live as a coward than die as a hero."

_Heroes there are many. There is but one father of Bud and Lisa!_ The voice that came from nowhere had both twins jumping nearly out of their skins as it rumbled across the Junkyard. The menacing aura around the fallen broom coalesced into the form of a small monster that looked like a regular Imp—but it was all over dark gray—that advanced on the twins with its pitchfork brandished high.

"Lisa, run!" Bud yelled over the shaking growl that make the ground beneath his feet dance. Lisa did as she was told and bolted, getting several dozen feet away before she dared to look bad. Bud just gave her a rakish grin as he brought out his trusty frying pan and slung it onto his shoulder. "Ya just stay right there, Lisa," he called to her with all of the confidence born out of months of hard training. "I'll take care of this!"

"Bud!!" Lisa cried, beginning to run back.

An arm covered in reeking goop stopped her, barring her from taking even one more step back. Nose wrinkling against the smell, she followed it up into the stern face of her teacher. Rei was watching Bud take measured swings against the Gray Imp, dancing back to strum a harp shining golden in the sun when it got too close.

"Take it easy, Lisa," Rei told her student calmly. "Bud's got this one under control."

And indeed he did, his twin discovered. A few more whacks and the Imp dissolved into a handful of string-tied bones, leaving Bud the sole possessor of the open space and the broom. Rei moved her arm then, letting Lisa dash into the clearing to hug her brother with a relieved burble of laughter. "Thanks, Bud!!"

"Good job," was all Rei said as she walked over.

"We did it!!" grinned the youth, frying pan once again slung against his shoulder as he beamed up at his teacher. His sibling took the opportunity to grab her broom before something else happened to it. "Didja see, Master?!"

"Sure did. Now let's get out of here so I can wash. I think this goop's starting to solidify." Both put a hand against her back, well practiced by now in the art of group teleporting, and all three disappeared in a swirl of Mana.

———

Clean and mildly calmer now that both her students were safe, Rei plunked herself down in her rocking chair and beckoned imperiously for the broom that Bud was now clutching. He brought it over, casting a reassuring glance over his shoulder at his sibling. "Don't worry! I'll fix it!"

"_We'll_ fix it," Rei corrected firmly, taking up the broom and examining the break. "Your punishment starts now, Lisa. Bud, while she's taking care of the chores that _should_ have been done this morning, I'm going to teach you one of the few spells that the Venstry family made itself. It's one for mending magical objects like instruments or channeling tools like this."

_:What about me?:_ inquired the rocking horse that had been left on the table this morning.

Rei glanced over at it. "You can't be missing parts if you want this spell to work on you, 'horse. You've waited decades for someone to take you home and mend you. I think you can stand to wait a few more hours."

The 'horse subsided with a grumble as Rei got down to teaching the spell, Lisa resigning herself to a long, quiet month of chores and a whole lot of training. She knew perfectly well that the main part of whatever training she was going to be getting would involve never forgetting a weapon again.

But, thinking back to that moment in the Junkyard with her brother grinning at her against the backdrop of their mother's frying pan, Lisa thought she'd be okay with that. She would become strong like her brother and her teacher, so that she would never need rescuing again.

Next time, it would be _her_ that would be the hero.

———

Whew! Sorry if it's a bit stilted. Not a lot to work with in this chapter, and some of it just plain does not make sense. Best guess I had for that weird voice was it coming from the Imp or something, but even that was strange.

Anyhoo, here's hoping it won't take another four ungodly months for me to get the next chapter out. Since my current job is screwing me over I'm trying to find another one (please gods, not in retail!) and I have a sinful amount of time where I'm not helping customers. Which, quite frankly, is boring as all heck. I'm so used to working thirty-plus hours a week that it feels strange to be working twelve or less. Thus, I am motivated to write since I have nothing else to do while I wait for my applications to be processed.

Some silver lining. _—sighs—_

PS. Oi! You see that green button down there? Yeah, that's the one. Pretty, isn't it? Why don't you click on it? Bet something will happen. Never know, you might see your name in print next chapter.


	27. Gilbert: Resume of Love

I'm alive! And actually have made decent progress on the fic over the past couple of days. Gilbert may make my life difficult, but Escad and Irwin seem determined to get their chapters out with a minimum of fuss. It's a nice change. Apologies in advance if the writing still seems a bit stilted—despite the cooperation of two of the three males, these were not the easiest chapters I've ever written.

Oh, yes, almost forgot to mention: In celebration of reaching the 100th review and the 200th page, I'm posting two chapters. Let the confetti fly.

PS. On an entirely different note, it's a very odd feeling to find that the Sim character that you made for fun for a friend's game game not only gets kidnapped by aliens their _first time_ looking through the telescope, but they come back pregnant and eventually end up with very cute, very green _twins. _Oh, yeah, and the character is _male_. o.O

**Meeerf:** Whatever you want Pearl to look like in your fic is your choice. I love Author's Perogative. Her hairdo is a pair of pigtails while Blackpearl's is a single 'tail. They just both have very fluffy hair. As for the ring, I've never found it in my inventory. Presumably, Elazul takes it with him and you never see it again. We get back to the arcs next chapter, resuming with the Faerie arc first.

**aRLeg0dDesS:** I know, right? Something would have to be seriously wrong for me to go for the hero role that has a hero's funeral at the end of it.

**Reiko x 3** and **Dark:** GameFAQs may be one of the most useful sites on the net. And while I may not be as bad as the author you describe, four months is definitely unusual for me. I've only had one case of writer's block bad enough to really make the fic and my readers suffer. It's the infamous Autumn story for my Season Tales in the YYH universe, which I took down when I got stuck halfway through. While most of my drive for that story is, unfortunately, dead, I still work on it from time to time. I hate leaving a project unfinished and that includes my stories.

**Xenocanaan:** —_waves_—

**Tiamat42:** I know what you mean about being sorta anti-social. I really have to get back to leaving reviews for the stories I follow more often. No, the rocking horse is not a portent. I just thought it was a cute idea. And the gremlin really was such a little mini-boss, wasn't it? —_grins_— Shambler goo is _totally_ gross, and the game does sometimes lack sense. But we love it anyway.

**hUes -of- h a z e l:** Everybody hug this person. Or pounce, whichever you prefer, since hUes was the 100th review and got my butt back in gear. Sorry about last chapter, hUes. I tried, but sometimes the twins don't cooperate with me.

———

Rei sighed, looking at the newly-completed stairs to the golem workshop that Professor Bomb had unexpectedly built when she wasn't looking. She knew why he had done it; he was thanking her for the return of a malfunctioning golem with delusions of world conquest. But when was she going to use the thing? Whatever odds and ends in the way of armor and weapons tended to get sold as she went to earn money for other, more important things.

Like food and clothing.

_Still,_ she thought to herself after several long minutes of contemplation, _it is kind of nice to have that back wall looking so clean. And the stairs will make a comfortable seating area if I have a larger party than just a few friends or Xan..._

With another deep sigh the knife-fighter decided that she'd just turn over the golem workshop and its accompanying handbook to her students and see what they'd make of it. Or with it.

Autumn was in full swing here in this part of Fa'Diel. Their cottage tree was sporting a fiery crown of leaves—a thin scattering of them were already waiting on the ground to be crunched underfoot. The most recent harvest was safely tucked into their cupboards and root cellar, Nip and Fuzzbucket's winter coats were growing in at a decent rate, and the two-leggers of Haven Tree Cottage were set for the cold winter with a new wardrobe of their own.

Naturally, this meant that Rei's feet were itching again. Today, though, she had a good excuse to hit the road. She had a number of errands to run, and the locales were scattered far enough apart that she would be gone at least a day even using her teleportation spell.

One of them was filling her worn pack fit to pop a seam, as a matter of fact. She had to return several books to Kathinja at the Academy and borrow the next set in order to keep up with her apprentices' rapid progress in their studies. Kathinja had been hinting lately that if the twins were really doing so well ("Not that I'm doubting you, Rei.") then she'd be more than happy to sponsor them if they wanted to reapply at the Academy.

Rei had been thinking about that. She was thinking about it now, even as she belted on her knives and shrugged into the straps of her travel-pack. It was still on her mind as she picked up a cloak and went in search of her students to let them know she was heading out.

Lisa was in her garden as usual, preparing the plants for a winter sleep by spreading a thick layer of compost to keep their tender roots from freezing. Her broom was leaning against the fence separating the herb garden from the orchard, showing that the month of training disguised as grounding had had the desired effect. She gave her teacher an absentminded goodbye, thoughts obviously a million miles away on a ship that Rei wasn't going to bother chasing at this moment.

Bud was in the corral, using a currycomb on Fuzzbucket to rid the Grey Ox's coat of brambles. His goodbye was a bit sharper and flavored with curiosity, the teenager obviously wondering why his mentor was so distracted. He also asked her to say hello to the friends he'd left behind at the Academy like he always did.

Rei waved and told him she would before she sent her magic spinning out in the whirling pattern of her teleportation spell.

———

The instructors of the Academy were beginning to get on Rei's nerves. Seriously, didn't they have anything better to do with their time than to poke their noses in her life or try to meddle in the lives of her students?

These and others along the same lines were the thoughts circling restlessly in the knife-fighter's head as she carefully pried the lid off of a wooden crate. She was down in the basement warehouse of the Palace of Arts in search of books—specifically, the books that Lisa and Bud needed to continue their education.

Kathinja was the only one of the teachers not subject to Rei's grumbling. The half-basilisk woman had been nothing but chagrin incarnate when Rei had come in a little over an hour ago to return the last set of books she'd borrowed. From olive lips had come the news that the other teachers of the mage-school had discovered their agreement and had demanded that it be stopped at once.

_"They threatened to fire me if I kept lending you books out of the school library," Kathinja had said with a resigned shrug. "Something about there being rules about the use of school property and people who aren't faculty or students. Frankly, I think they're just jealous that your kids go through a term's worth of curriculum in six weeks. Thesenis seems to be the only other teacher besides me who acts like she's mildly happy that your two terrors are improving so quickly. Mind you, that's rubbing her hands in glee if she was anyone else..."_

_Rei had stifled the impulse to go hit her head against a wall—and the one that said she should do that to some of the other instructors, and had instead asked, "What about your personal library?"_

_"No good. I've only got a limited selection of books for myself. I've been using the school library for years." Kathinja had given the pile of books sitting on her desk a look as resigned as her shrug, wrinkling her nose a little at the sharp tang of metal and green things that the books exuded. "I've got a couple of rarities, but nothing to finish the groundwork of advancing students. I argued with those hidebound idiots for hours yesterday, trying to get their heads out of the sand, but they told me flat out—Mephianse too—that if you wanted to keep borrowing stuff from us, the twins would have to sit the winter exams."_

That had been about the point when Rei had left, determined not to step foot beyond those gates again except for an emergency. Entrust the safety of her foster-children to the care of people who hadn't been able to keep one single girl safe from Sandra? Not a chance.

_Granted,_ Rei acknowledged to herself as she began to sift through layers of straw that smelled strongly of an extended period of neglect, _I haven't been able to do much against Sandra myself. But I am only one person. They've got no excuse. They didn't even care enough to take a little extra time to teach Bud or Lisa better control. _

She had come to the Palace of the Arts after that, knowing that Kristie had far more in her collection than could ever be displayed, and hoping that books for sale would be amongst those things. The full-blooded basilisk woman had tapped a considering finger against her lips, but had agreed to let Rei search through the boxes and crates below for what she needed. _"I am far more interested in artists than I am in authors, in any case,"_ had been the dry observation. _"Just make sure that they aren't first editions."_

Searching hands met tanned leather nestled amongst the straw. With ginger care, Rei extracted a thick book from its nest and held it up in the dim light. "_A Student's Guide to Herbs, Magical and Medical,_ by Nicoline Redfa," she read aloud, face breaking into a smile. "Found one." After checking it to ensure that it was indeed not a first edition, she placed it with the three or four others she had found already. And then sneezed several times in succession as the musty straw and thick layers of dust that painted most of the surfaces around her ganged together for an assault against her nose.

Groping in her pack for a handkerchief, she thought she heard something amongst the crates and shrouding cloths and froze, listening intently. It had almost sounded like a sigh...There it was again. Curious now, sneezing fit forgotten, Rei got back to her feet and prowled through the Stygian gloom for the source of the noise.

And sighed herself, upon finding the stone shape of the luckless Gilbert standing across the aisle from where Diana had once stood on her pedestal. "So this is where you ended up, you hopeless centaur? I might have known."

Stone eyes gazed through her as the ghost of his voice curled through the silence of the warehouse. _"Monique, my true love...I came to a town you know not, fell in love with a woman, and sang a song you know not. I have become a person you know not. A rabbit-eared merchant came and sold me to a woman of wealth, and here I am in a dark, cold warehouse. Sadness envelops me but I cannot cry, for I have become a stone. All I do now is reminisce about our childhood..."_ Another soft whisper of a sigh. _"We fought each other so often, but the time we shared was full of joy and laughter. I wish to sing you a love song once again, Monique."_

Rei tilted her head a bit, regarding the granite features for several long minutes before she nodded. The chimes of her hair-pipes echoed around them as she gave a rough-textured arm a pat. "I was beginning to wonder if you'd ever see sense," she told the stone ears seriously. "Okay. I'll see if I can't get you back to normal, Gilbert."

With her promise made, she tamped the lid of the last crate back into place, gathered up her prizes, and went to go talk to the folks upstairs.

———

"Sotherbee, when did you pick up that statue of a centaur minstrel?" Rei asked, emerging into the fresh air and bright sunlight of the reception room. The blue-clad, adorable mannikin heaved a sigh at the question.

"We have wecentwy acquiwed the statue, but we still have no takers. Maybe I should twy a new sales pitch, wike...'Helps pwevent cowwapsing woofs!'"

"Um, you do that, Sotherbee," Rei encouraged, highly doubting that anyone would buy a statue for such a use. She paid him for the books she had found, said goodbye to Kristie, and then headed for the Ulkan Mines for her next errand, grumbling at the time lost thanks to stubborn professors.

———

Shifting her pack into a slightly more comfortable position, Rei squinted in the gloom that filled the depths of the Mines. She had come to buy some materials from Watts, but his workshop was empty of the energetic little blacksmith and the racket of his crafting. Was the entire _world_ against her attempt to finish her list of errands quickly?

With an irritated huff she went back towards the entrance and stopped by the blue-and-yellow sign standing in the half-light. "Dudbear Express," she said aloud, and was whisked away by a speeding Dudbear into the depths of the Mines.

The headquarters of the religious group called the Diggers was a comfortable, small cave near the middle of the second layer of the Mines. Someone long ago had installed air venting and a flue for the inhabitants, most likely the Dudbears themselves and the human who was their non-secular boss. It meant that there was always a cheery fire burning in the modest hearth to ward off the chilly damp of the mines.

Putty the dog, the religious icon and technical leader of the Diggers, was curled by the hearth and barely looked up when Rei was extracted from whatever pocket-space her ride had used to transport her and set gently on her feet. He only wagged his tail in greeting before returning to his nap.

Putty wasn't the one she wanted to talk to. It was rude of her, she knew, but she walked over to the blue notebook sitting on a table and flipped it open, reading the rather bemused poem aloud and waiting for the inevitable result.

Right on cue, in came the grumpy Roger, human boss of the Diggers. Fur hat quaking in his fury, he stalked over to the table and snatched his book up, tucking it away as he yelled at her for the invasion of privacy.

And as though in response to his anger, the floor beneath them shook a stomach-clenching warning. Temper at Rei forgotten for the moment, a now-pensive Roger gazed up at the ceiling before looking over at one of the three Dudbears who were always keeping Putty company. "The mine's ceiling may cave in at any time. Hey! Hey, Dudbear!"

"Dub!" chirped the little creature being gestured at, throwing the man an enthusiastic, if rough, salute.

"Go get something that'll stop the cave-ins!" Roger barked. The Dudbear saluted again and dashed out at top speed. Roger looked over at Rei and waved his hands at her. "Alright, the show's over! Bye now!"

"Wait a moment, Roger," Rei protested. "Look, I'm sorry I read your poem, but I came to talk to you. Watts is out and I need materials for my forge. Do you have any ore or bar-stock I could buy?"

Roger grumped, but after a little more coaxing and the reminder that Rei had helped him out before, he settled into a bargaining session for the raw metals and other items that the knife-fighter wanted to purchase. There were a few tremors through the discussion, nothing terribly concerning, until one tremor stopped abruptly.

The Dudbear that had been sent off ambled back into the headquarters, looking quite pleased with himself as he rattled off a string of syllables in his kind's strange language. Roger nodded to it in acknowledgement as he tucked the pouch of Rei's Lucre into one of his own. "The horse statue we just bought from Kristie seems to be supporting the ceiling. It's been put in a special place, so don't move it!" the human cautioned her in his usual crabby tones.

"Horse statue?" Rei bit back a groan and caught the Dudbear's attention. "Hey, that statue. Was it about as tall as I am, kind of funny looking, with a stone lute on its back?"

"Dub!"

This time the groan escaped, Rei heading out of the cave with her palm firmly placed on her forehead. "Gilbert, you unlucky idiot. You finally wise up enough for me to take you seriously, and that crazy sales pitch of Sotherbee's actually works. Wonderful. I should send a message to the kids, let them know that I've been kidnapped by a series of stupid circumstances and will be home later than I thought. Nyarg!"

Roger had said that they'd stashed the petrified minstrel in a 'special place'. Now, frankly she didn't know of any place down here that could be labeled as 'special', at least in her book, which meant that she was in for a long search. She might as well start on this level and work her way downwards.

———

Gilbert, she discovered after nearly an hour and a half of looking, was in one of the abandoned rooms on the second level, not far from a statue of the Mana Goddess. A good portion of that time hadn't actually been spent in searching, but rather on the rather surprising amount of monsters that called the Ulkan Mines their home. Rei was beginning to wonder about the survival instincts of monsters in places like this; no matter how many times she passed through an area to clear out the beasties, every time she came back there would be more. Always in the same place, in the same numbers with the same kinds. Sometimes she got the feeling she was just fighting copies or something.

Dusting her hands off, Rei approached the statue of the unfortunate Gilbert. "Okay, sugar, what do you have to say for yourself in terms of letting yourself get sold before I could help you?"

The statue let out another ghostly, wistful sigh and said, _"Monique, I miss you. Your voice was absolutely phenomenal. And Flameshe, you were so charming when I saw you at the harbor...Miss Kathinja, I won't hate you for turning me into stone...Madame MeiMei...Elle...Rachel...Miss Yuka......I love you all."_

Rei smacked her forehead with the heel of her palm and let out a sigh of her own, exasperated. "Geez, horse, even Rachel? What kind of standards do you have, anyway, hitting on a girl barely into her teens?" She ruffled her bangs. "If it weren't for Monique's feelings about you, it's times like this I'd be happy leaving you a statue. Stay there and think some more, stupid. Maybe you'll have found that speck of common sense you showed earlier by the time I come back."

———

After stopping back at the cottage for a book on support wardings and to drop off her pack, Rei headed for Madora to talk with Elle and Flameshe. She'd meant to do this months ago, back when the idiot minstrel had first gotten himself turned to stone, but somehow she'd never had the time before.

When she arrived at the flowering, oversized bird-cage, she found Elle sitting on the swing at the top like always but no Flameshe. _Drat._

"Hello, Rei!" greeted the pretty Siren in her soft, musical voice. A little of Rei's irritation melted away at the sound of it; she'd always been a sucker for music. "How are you today?"

"Not too bad. Sorry I haven't been by lately."

Elle smiled, kicking her feet a little. "It's alright. Flameshe comes by to visit me often, and sometimes Monique." A shy blush. "Sometimes sailors, too. I make sure to keep the door locked when they come by, but they seem to like listening to me sing when they aren't on their ships."

"I'm glad you aren't lonely," Rei told her, smiling in return. "But where is Flameshe? I needed to talk to the two of you."

A slight lift of the shoulders was Elle's reply, followed with, "She never tells me where she goes. She has more secrets than a cat."

Rei pouted for a moment before sighing. "No help for it, I guess. I'll just have to find her later." Very quietly to herself, the knife-fighter muttered, "It's not like I can run any later than I already am, anyway." Raising her voice back to normal, she asked Elle, "Do you want to come with me to Lumina? I have to go talk to Monique."

"I'd love to!" Elle replied, eagerly hopping off of her perch and fluttering to the dry ground beside her friend. "I was hoping to go outside today!"

"Great! I like company when I'm doing a lot of 'hopping'," Rei told her cheerfully, taking the surprised female's hand with a wink. "For some reason, the spell seems to work better with higher body mass."

"What?" echoed for a moment or two in the empty aerie, muffled as air spun in to fill the empty space where two people had stood.

———

Elle was understandably surprised when they appeared at the little square near the tavern in Lumina, her feathers all slicked flat as she clung to an amused and contrite Rei. "Ah, sorry about that. I forgot you haven't done that before." Bonking her own temple lightly with a knuckle, Rei told her sheepishly, "I 'hop', or use a teleport spell, so often these days that I sometimes forget who hasn't come with me on one. Are you okay?"

Lips pressed tight, but feathers beginning to relax, the Siren nodded her head and loosened her grip after a few more moments. "So that was a teleport spell?" Elle inquired curiously as she stretched first one wing, then the other. "When did you learn to use one?"

"Last winter, during a mess with some dragons," Rei told her in a light tone, not looking at her friend. "I don't really talk about those weeks much, but I ended up good friends with one of the dragons and her dragoon. The dragoon was the one who taught me the spell." _Not that Sierra meant to, originally, I'm sure,_ chuckled Rei to herself as she led the wondering Elle down the main street towards the 'Limelight'. _But that's what happens when you use a spell too often in front of a Venstry._

Her mood bubble popped after a moment, though, as she remembered why she had come. "Hey, Elle? How do you break it to a girl that her sweetheart's still a statue and is now stuffed in some dark little room in the Ulkan Mines, being used as a prop for the ceiling?"

Elle blinked at her. "What?"

Scuffing the toe of her shoe on the cobblestones as they walked, Rei filled her in on what had happened today. Everything from finding Gilbert still a statue, still a lovelorn idiot, and how he'd been bought by the Diggers to support the mine ceiling. "And on top of all of that, I still haven't found a single spell capable of breaking the gaze of a basilisk," Rei finished mournfully. "I came to tell Monique, but I really don't know how to break it to her."

The bell jingled over the door with a cheer that hardly matched the troubled eyes that met Rei's own upon entering the 'Limelight'. The expression lightened into open surprise at the Siren hopping into the shop at Rei's heels, Monique's mouth shaping a small 'o'. "Wow, Elle! You came to see me?"

Elle blushed and replied, "Actually, we were in the area and thought we'd stop by."

The wingless Siren behind the counter gave her a sweet smile that almost managed to reach her eyes. "Wow. I've never heard of a Siren on an adventure before. You're going to become a legend, you know?"

Rei stepped forward, rubbing the back of her neck uneasily. "Hey, um, Monique...?"

"I heard that Gilbert was turned into a stone statue," Monique told her gently, the smile disappearing. "You came with that news a while ago. I guess I was just hoping that a cure had been found by now. Is it true that he is now somewhere in the mines?"

Rei mentally amended a previous observation that she'd made this past spring: _Centaurs have good eyes, and Sirens have damn good ears. Check._ "Yeah."

For a moment, all was silent in the shop. Then Monique shrugged and said airily, "Well, it's none of my business...Ah, I think I'll go to the beach to relax!" Hopping over the counter, she brushed by Rei quickly enough that the knife fighter almost missed the gleam of tears on her cheeks before the Siren was out the door.

Elle made a noise of protest and chased after her, calling anxiously, "Wait for me, Monique!"

Left alone in the shop, Rei muttered a brief prayer for _some_ Power to take mercy on her and went to flip the door's sign from 'open' to 'closed'. She'd take the time to see if that traveling Academy student who'd set up shop in the alley behind the tavern had gotten in anything she needed before she went back to Elle's home.

———

Rei was walking up the steps onto the second floor of Elle's sanctuary when the knife-fighter discovered that the Sirens had arranged themselves comfortably in their usual places. Elle was sitting once again in her swing over the pond, while Monique had chosen a perch on one of the large, upraised roots of the flowering bushes that covered the outside of the eyrie. "Gilbert is a weird guy, but I guess we should still help him," Elle was saying thoughtfully as Rei gratefully plunked herself down on another root.

She'd done no less than seven teleports today, all of them in under three hours and some of them with a heavy pack. She was getting _tired_.

"You think so, too?" Monique smiled at her shy friend before it melted into a troubled look. "But I wonder what we can do?"

Elle slowly kicked her feet for a few moments as she thought. "Hmm...Maybe ask the sorcerers at the Academy of Magic?"

"I don't know..." began Monique, only to receive a head-shake from Rei.

"Don't bother. One of the teachers was the one who turned him into stone. And any tome that might come in handy has recently been restricted to student and faculty hands only, thanks to some hide-bound idiots with their heads up their—"

_Bu-whup!_ Three heads turned to find an unruffled Flameshe arranging herself on the roots nearest the water. The mermaid looked around, spotted the wingless Siren sitting nearby, and said in a voice that was far too casual, "Oh, hi, Monique. When did you get here?"

"Hello, Flameshe!" replied Monique, gratefully seizing on the newest arrival as a way to change the subject.

Rei merely nodded at the mermaid with a soft 'hello' for a greeting, her mind still occupied with the needs of her students and the best of several ways to get the stubborn Flameshe to share that curse-breaking spell with her.

Flameshe, in the meantime, had fixed the two Sirens with a mildly-annoyed frown as she curled her tail-fin against her hip. "Were you talking about Gilbert again?" she accused with resigned heat.

Elle leveled a surprisingly strong look at the unrepentant mermaid as she accused in turn, "Oh, you were listening to us!"

"No, I wasn't listening," Flameshe huffed, crossing her arms and pouting. "I just _happened_ to hear you! Who on earth wants to hear anything about him?"

"I'd like to hear about him getting put back in the Palace of Art's basement," Rei murmured under her breath to no one in particular, half in prayer, half in jest. "Then I'd have an excuse to go digging for more books again."

Monique gave the two non-sympathizers a hurt look and said, "My, you don't have to hate him _that_ much!"

"I don't hate him, Monique," Rei told her friend seriously. "He just has an astounding knack for making my life very complicated."

"_I_ don't understand why Monique likes that guy," Flameshe grumped to Elle. "I guess Sirens go for anything that sings!"

Elle puffed her feathers up and scolded the mermaid. "You know that's not fair to her!"

The coppery shoulders slumped in resignation. "Okay, okay. Fall in love with whoever you want," she sighed at Monique, and disappeared into the blue bubble of her transport spell again. But no sooner had the last drop of liquid from its surface vanished into the bark she'd been sitting on than the mermaid appeared again, face set into a mask of neutrality. "Monique, memorize the spell I'm going to say now. I will say it only once, okay?"

Monique blinked at the abrupt turn of events. "A spell?" Rei leaned forward, holding her breath as she hoped very hard that it was going to be what she'd been looking for.

"It'll lift any curse, if it's cast by the cursed one's most beloved. It's a famous spell among the mermaids. It's kind of long, so listen carefully. Ready? 'Heavens bless the earth with life-giving showers of rain. The ancient memories of Mother Earth fill our souls with bliss. Know the truth that is the ultimate tower of energy for all.'"

"Oh, Flameshe! That's too long!" cried the Siren in dismay, not noticing Rei scribbling madly in one of the thin notebooks she carried around for occasions such as this.

"Well, too bad!" Flameshe retorted, disappearing once again into a vanishing bubble.

Elle sighed. "She's a kind girl, but she can be so harsh sometimes..."

"Well," Monique said, rising to her feet, "I will go try it out. It can't hurt, can it?"

"I'll go with you!" Rei told her hastily, scrambling to her feet. "Trust me, you'll need my help to keep the roof from collapsing on our heads. He's really in a weight-bearing section and I so do not want to explain to my apprentices how I got myself buried alive. They get so overprotective," she added upon seeing their startled looks. "Anyway, let's get going."

———

Monique's small lamp was a neon firefly in the darkness of the abandoned room in the mines, casting a rich, pale purple light on the occupants and the walls. Monique knelt in front of the statue as Rei moved around, tracing runes and figures onto the walls with a paintbrush and a small pot of paint. "Gilbert..." the Siren murmured, looking up into the mournful stone face, "our harmony ended up in discord. But you're still a good friend of mine. Start over your quest for love again. But you first need to come back!" Looking over at the sprite now blowing a peculiar kind of glittery dust on the wet paint, Monique asked, "Are you finished?"

"Almost..." Puff, puff. Rei dusted off her hands and looked around critically at the wards of support and protection that she'd carefully drawn across the walls and the ceiling, then nodded. "Yeah, that should do it."

"Okay. I'm ready." The Siren gave her an uncertain smile. "Please help me out."

Out came the notebook, Rei moving around until the gentle light fell onto the proper page. "Right. Ready."

Monique took a deep breath and got started. "Heavens bless the earth..."

It took only a minute, even with Rei prompting every few words, for the spell to tumble from the Siren's lips. At the word 'all', brilliant light poured out from the granite statue in such strength that Rei had to fling an arm up to shield her eyes. When she lowered it again, Gilbert was flicking his gaze between the rough floor and the smiling Monique and scuffing a back hoof against the unfinished stone floor. "Monique, um...I don't know what to say, but...Thanks."

Monique beamed at him as she rose to her feet and dusted off her knees. "That sounded just like the good old Gilbert that I know!"

Not wanting to ruin the moment between the two, Rei merely kept her hope that he'd grown perhaps a little wiser than the 'good old Gilbert', at least in terms of the heart, firmly to herself and slipped out of the cave. She still had to stop by Gato for herbs and then back to Domina to check in with the Thatchers to get both her roof and her brother's re-thatched. And those were only the next two things on her list. She had a half-dozen more and now only about four hours before the sun went down and everything closed.

"I swear," she muttered to herself as she swept her arm out into the opening of her teleportation spell, "all the of males in my life make things so damned complicated..."

———

Nothing to say....


	28. Pokiehl: Dream Teller

———

A few days later, Rei had amended that observation to include a majority of the people in her life, period. Rachel, calm, quiet, gentle Rachel, who had been the last person Rei had suspected could do something crazy, had up and disappeared. Then Jen had found a note that said the fairy-like girl had run off to the Academy for some reason or another, and there had been nothing for it but for Rei to go back to that place and look.

Only then some experiment of Thesenis' had gone off practically in her face just as Rei had gotten to the Library to talk to the dusty professor, and Rachel—whom the knife-fighter would have _sworn_ left, right, and center had been standing _right there—_was gone again, leaving only that odd student that practiced Mentalism standing in even odder silence.

Of course, Rachel had been back at home by the time a very puzzled Rei had returned to the Marchants' place. Only...only it hadn't been Rachel, really, but that selfsame student that had shown the knife-fighter a taste of the Mentalist magics so long ago in Geo, his mind in her body. And it appeared that _Rachel's_ mind was in _his_ body, learning magic under the discerning eye of Thesenis until the time that she felt comfortable with returning home.

Goddess only knew how long that would be.

And yet...Jen and Mark didn't seem to be all that dismayed once the explanations were done. Rachel still spoke to them through mind-magic almost every night after schoolwork, teaching them how to see her for herself instead of the daughter they'd thought they had, through the mental image of a blue jiggly.

Mr. Green Wiggly was continuing in his—her?—new role as daughter, for all intents and purposes the real and true Rachel. Rei still wasn't sure how that was actually supposed to work or what the child would be learning by it.

And then there had been the concurrent mess with Teapo convinced that Rachel had been trying to kill Mark and thinking that the girl had set Teapo up as an explosive of some kind—only to find that Rachel had turned her into a very small rocket-ship for her father. Something about a childhood dream or whatnot.

And to make matters worse yet, now she had a mopey, sulking Bud on her hands because his first true love was now a considerable distance away. Much, _much_ further away than he could safely jump on his own via teleportation, and Rei had put her foot down for once and told him straight out that she was _not_ going to let him risk his health or mind by over-stretching himself that much. Nor was she going to help him shirk his chores by 'hopping' with him.

There had been a minor, non-magical explosion over that. Mostly hormones getting the better of her rougher student as he declared her 'unfeeling, mean, and heartless' before stomping out to the corral to sulk. Lisa had only observed that Rei was rubbing off rather strongly on her impressionable brother and had gone to make something for dinner.

Rei had waited a few hours before she'd gone into the corral and hauled Bud out by the scruff of his robes, hissing and spitting and putting every single one of his combat lessons to waste. She'd shaken him like she'd shake any erring young monster pet and had told him that there were always letters or mind-magic if he had the control for it, and that now he would find out once and for all if it was only Rachel's pretty face he cared for, or her mind.

Actually, Rei was beginning to wonder if that wouldn't work out to everyone's advantage. Aside from giving her most adventuresome foster-child yet another reason to practice control, Rachel becoming a student at the Academy meant that she had another inside link besides Kathinja. If the situation called for it, Rachel could look up needed answers in the Great Library when Kathinja was unavailable and Rei's own library didn't have what was required.

_Silver lining,_ Rei chanted to herself with a renewed grasp on her patience. _Like Xan always says, look for the silver lining. Even when it's upside-down and inside-out on the stupid cloud. _She repeated it under her breath a few more times as she carefully picked her way across stones slick with moisture, her goal the foliage growing lush and thick at the base of Gato's waterfall. This was the last thing she needed to take care of for as long as winter lasted in her home territory—collect some of the last of autumn's herbs for potions during the cold months. That disaster with Rachel had come up and she hadn't gotten a chance to finish the task until now.

Nearly to the small stream that gurgled as it rushed away from its birthing pool, Rei stopped and blinked at the Faerie hovering patiently above the root bridge. Its gaze was focused directly on her a combination of expectation and irritation. Somehow, Rei got the impression that she'd kept it waiting.

"I heard that Matilda is going to be our new queen," it declared, crossing tiny arms across a thin chest garbed only in a single layer of purple silk.

"I'd say to ask Matilda first before you prepared for a coronation," Rei countered in an amiable tone, settling into a relaxed stance with her thumbs tucked into her belt. "Since she apparently never wanted to be a priestess, I wouldn't bet on her wanting a crown any more than she wanted the habit."

A proud smile brightened the small being's whole mien. She'd managed to please it somehow, though she wasn't sure if it was from the sharp answer or the fact that she'd bothered to answer at all. "Matilda and Irwin were chased into the mines by Escad, ten years ago. Go to the mines to ask Pokiehl to tell you the story."

Rei considered that for a moment and nodded, deciding that she'd been right to start carrying around a journal like her parents used to. "Alright. But I need to gather some herbs before I go. May I?"

"By all means." And with that, the Faerie disappeared into the mist of the falls.

The knife-fighter got down to work, carefully choosing each spray and late-season bloom and tucking them away into jars in her pack. She'd have to drop them off at home before following the Faerie's instructions or they'd no doubt be limp and useless by the time Pokiehl had finished with her.

Satisfied with her new supplies, Rei rose with the last pot in her hand and turned—and came nose to nose, practically, with a narrowed set of bright blue eyes. Instincts took momentary control of reflexes, reducing her from a competent fighter to a puffball of startled feline. She let out a loud noise of surprise that was some unholy combination of a shout and a yelp and flailed backwards, the clay jar going flying.

Rump firmly in contact with damp stone and foliage, Rei stared up at an equally-surprised Escad, who had somehow managed to rescue the jar and its contents from a shattering demise. His mouth was slightly open, the suspicious look melted into one of utter astonishment at her reaction. "Flammies' teeth, Escad!" panted the knife-fighter as she tried to get her pulse back under control. "Don't _do_ that! I _swear_ I'm going to put a bell on you or something."

"A...bell?" Escad repeated slowly, offering a wary hand to the golden-haired sprite. "Why a bell?"

She took the hand and was pulled easily to her feet. Reclaiming her jar with a nod of thanks, she explained. "You keep popping up out of nowhere on me. The Jungle, here, _especially_ here...You're going to give me a heart attack one of these days."

The holy knight made a sound of acknowledgment, but the majority of his focus was on the waterfall where the Faerie had disappeared to. After a moment in which Rei started dusting herself off, he commented, "You can see the Faeries, can't you?"

Rei blinked at him with her free hand in mid-swipe of her skirt. "Well, yes. Though I've never seen more than the one here."

"The Faeries that we humans can see are evil-hearted," he murmured above the roar of the falls. "Those that can see them must be evil-hearted, too."

Too tired after the week's events to bother taking offense, Rei just shrugged and put the rescued jar into her pack. "I guess that makes you quasi-evil compared to my full evil, then," she replied mildly, "since Matilda mentioned that you said you can see them now. Which I already knew since the day you hacked down half-a-dozen of them in Rosiotti's Jungle." At his sharp glare, she shrugged again and settled her pack firmly against her spine. "I haven't gone on a killing spree of magical creatures in justification of a decade-old feud, Escad. Stones and glass houses."

"You defend them." His voice was filled with shocked disbelief. "Even Irwin."

Rei lifted a correcting finger. "Ah, not Irwin. He can take of himself just fine if one can judge by his backhand. But I _would_ appreciate it if you left the Faeries alone. The Wars are over. Let them stay that way."

"You think they are over?" Escad snorted. "In case you hadn't noticed, sentiments between Faeries and humans haven't changed. Not in the five hundred years and more that have passed since the Wars were declared over."

Rei turned to look at him properly, then, halfway up the brief stretch of rock that led to the Paths of Asceticism. "They know that I do not hate them, Escad. They know that the Wisdoms, who have granted me the sight to see them, do not hate them. There are a great many who find them fascinating, wondrous creatures that were crafted as we were by the Goddess' hands and the hands of Her first children. And I have met Faeries in the lands of ice and snow who bear no hatred whatsoever for any of us born without wings." Escad was staring at her like he'd never seen her before now. "Things change, Escad. People, lands, thoughts, hopes, dreams, hatreds, all of these things change. The only question that remains is, will you change before you break?"

And that was how she left him by the waterfalls of Gato, with his face gone blank and his gaze turned inward as she walked out of his sight.

———

Rei put a hand to her forehead as she materialized in front of the entrance to the mines. That had been...odd, to say the very least. So odd, that her body wasn't entirely certain it was going to stay upright for the immediate future. She found herself leaning against the worked stone and wood of the entrance as she tried to shake off whatever was turning her bones to water.

She'd never done that before. And if most of her memories of Pokiehl's talk didn't still confuse her, she'd be worried about suddenly talking a walk in a Wisdom's shoes. What had made her go all philosophical on Escad? Normal behavior would have left him with another lump on his skull as an emphasis of her temper at his bigoted words.

_But that was it, wasn't it, _she thought dazedly. That hadn't _been_ normal behavior, she was too tired for that. Had been too tired for her usual flashes of temper for days now. It had to be because of that damned dream. She'd been having recurring flashes of it for over a week and it always left her waking up tired instead of refreshed. _And anyway, me hitting him doesn't seem to knock sense into him. Maybe now he might change. I hope he does; Matilda's awfully fond of him and I'd hate to see her with more of a broken heart than she already has._

Strength returned slowly to her limbs, encouraging her to push herself upright and go into the dim entrance of the Ulkan Mines.

Pokiehl was waiting for her. Crouched in front of a large wooden chest, he gave her a welcoming smile from beneath his broad-brimmed, colorful hat. And before she could say a word of greeting to him, he stood and flung the lid of the chest open with a 'bang'.

From the shadowed depths rose golden stars, moons, and a tiny sun or two that waltzed in the air above the chest for a few heartbeats before popping like soap-bubbles. Pokiehl made a few gestures, striding on his long legs until he stood behind the open box so that the rising shapes formed a sort of curtain between them. "The earth teaches us of the cosmos and of all its ancient memories," he intoned, voice ringing off the low ceiling and reverberating in the knife-fighter's bones. "When the grass sprouts and stones sing, light shines on the earth. The light sparkles on the feathers of the birds of paradise. Break loose from the shackles of time! Know what freedom is!"

The world turned into light.

When Rei managed to blink the dancing spots away from her vision, the tunnel she stood in was changed. The overall shape was the same, but a rock that had been in one place was now in another and the air had turned a funny, faded color like watered-down tea.

And a young boy with wildly-spiked, long blond hair whirled to face her from the place where Pokiehl had stood, drawing a sword as he turned. "Who's there?!" demanded a smaller, scrawnier version of the Knight that Rei had spoken to not half an hour ago. As she stood there blinking at the boy, who couldn't be older than her very own apprentices, in blank surprise, he slowly relaxed and sheathed his sword. "I guess you're not with the demon," he said slowly.

Rei blinked again. "Demon?"

Kid!Escad nodded. "I'm looking for Irwin. He not only has demon's blood in him...His thoughts and actions, everything about him is demonic! I've got to do something about it before it's too late! Eventually he _will_ bring catastrophe to this world." He turned to look down the tunnel, apprehension tugging his eyebrows together as he spoke aloud to himself. "Matilda...You're such a fool! He tricked you into leaving the temple!"

And then he disappeared, leaving Rei to wonder how someone had managed to avoid any kind of personality change for ten whole years. And, despite the fact that this was evidently only a reflection of the past, would a few good smacks and some long conversation change anything at all?

Curiosity getting the better of her, Rei resettled the knives on her hips and walked off in search of the rest of the story.

———

Halfway through the mine, Rei started kicking herself. The jars of herbs from Gato were still in her pack since that dizzy spell had completely knocked the thought of going home clear out of her head. And she couldn't bear the thought of leaving, because the only one who knew how long this spell was going to last was Pokiehl, and that dratted bird was long, long gone. No Venstry worth the name could ever bear to walk away from important information—and if these events she was witnessing weren't important, she'd eat her hair-sticks and Xan's hat.

Wrinkling her nose as the odor of sulfur wafted towards her, the knife-fighter rummaged in her pack and came up with one of her ubiquitous clean rags, which she promptly rubbed with a leaf from the jars before wrapping it around her mouth and nose. _A bit better. Still, I'm not sure I like how much sulfur I'm...dearest Goddess._

She stopped just within the entrance to a medium-sized cave peppered with ground-to-ceiling stone growths, the stalagmites and stalactites having long since grown to meet each other. Half the cave's perimeter gaped with open vents pouring noxious fumes and steam into the air. Reflection though it was, the air still felt heavy and very, very wrong.

_Anyone smart will stay far away from this muck,_ Rei thought to herself, turning on her heel only to find the shadows of a girl and a bushy-haired youth tumbling headlong into the open space. The young demon-blood caught the girl before she could properly face-plant, steadying her as she rested her hands on her knees and panted.

"This way!" urged the boy, claws plucking restlessly at the long green sleeves of the girl's robes.

"I...I can't...breathe!" panted the girl, eyes screwed shut as she fought to get enough air through the miasma. Even knowing that this was the past and that she couldn't affect anything, Rei still had to squash an urge to offer them cloths to breathe through. If they hadn't noticed her standing just a few feet away by now, then they weren't going to.

Pausing in his restless motions, the clean-faced, rather scruffy and scrawny child that hardly matched the mental image that Rei had built up of the infamous Irwin took a look around. He rubbed under his nose a moment with the soft violet fur on the back of his arm and sniffed in displeasure. "I see gas spewing out here...It must be tough for you and Escad."

If the cute, rather feline fuzz-ball was Irwin, then...Rei took a closer look at the girl and spent a brief moment wondering what kind of a knockout the Abbess would be now if her vitality hadn't been taken away. If this bright-eyed, auburn-haired kid version was any hint, Sandra would have lost her place as prettiest red-head in Rei's awareness by a landslide.

"I wonder if the mine entrance is still holding up?" said young Matilda's shadow, straightening up to look uneasily back over her shoulder.

Mini-Irwin glanced back in echo, brow furrowed. "I don't know. Let's rest a little before we go further."

The shadows of the past faded as the future Abbess nodded and knelt down on the bare rock with the young demon-blood plunking himself carelessly down beside her.

———

It took some searching and a few scuffles with shades of monsters past, but Rei eventually found the next part of the story deep in the mines, down a corridor she rarely took whenever her travels brought her down here.

It was the shadows of the children of the temple again, posed much as they'd been when Rei had last seen them in a mortal-made cave blessedly empty of sulfur vents. "You should feel a little better here," the child-shade of Irwin was telling his companion when Rei found them at last. Although slightly rough with a faint edge of a growl to it—doubtless because of his demonic heritage—the gruff concern in the boy's voice was unmistakable for anything else.

It made Matilda's shade look over at him with her forehead knitted in puzzlement. "I wonder why Escad hates you so much," she said after a long pause, her own, sweet voice soft. Irwin's shade was silent, looking away with irritation fluffing the fur along his spine. Rei leaned around to get a better look, charmed despite knowing how much trouble this innocent's future self was causing. Matilda's shade prodded a little with, "Just because you are a demon?"

Whatever answer that she would have been given, if any, was drowned out by an ominous rumble that shook the whole space and forced Rei to brace her feet wide.

Mini-Matilda jumped up the moment the quake stopped, dismay widening her eyes as she looked back the way they'd come. "Wh-what happened? I hope that wasn't the mine entrance!"

Mini-Irwin didn't bother to rise, propping his forearms on his knees instead. "That was the mine entrance..." he confirmed unhappily. "I guess it was just too old."

The translucent girl plopped back down with tears welling up in large green eyes. "This was really fun at the beginning..." she whispered, beginning to sob. "It was the first time I ever left the temple by my own will." A hiccup. "But...I can't take it anymore! It's frightening me!" And she hid her face behind her sleeves as her shoulders quivered.

"You're protected by the spirits that also protected your ancestors," soothed her companion in a warm, high-pitched rumble like a kitten's purr. "Even if I die here, you will survive."

Mini-Matilda pulled her hands down and glared at him in a sudden display of defiance. "I won't become the priestess," she declared around a few hiccups. "Because priestesses aren't allowed to be friends with demons!"

"I'm not your friend," the furred youth told her, looking away and sounding distinctly uncomfortable. "I just want to eat you up, like all demons do."

_You might have an urge to do something to her with that mouth of yours, cub,_ Rei thought, amused, _but I highly doubt it involves your belly after that._

The green-clad shade seemed just as doubtful, for the defiant look turned into a rather cute pout. "You're lying! I..." She colored pink and hastily scrambled to say, "I want to go to the Underworld! Adults are always telling us what to do."

Irwin's younger self paused at that, before he rose to his feet and turned to look down at his companion. "I don't like this darkness," he told her. "Summon your spirit. It will tell us how to survive."

With tears still streaking her face, the future Abbess raised her hands and paused for several long seconds. "I...I don't want to go back..." she whispered as a Wisp bloomed into softly-glowing existence above her palms.

"You gotta live!" growled Mini-Irwin, stamping his booted foot in a burst of temper. "If you hate this world so much, I will destroy it! We should have the freedom to use our power in any way we want!" He let out a snarl, burying his claws in ephemeral light and snatching the spirit away. "_Ixe hos vellus ll aque kin_..." he chanted, forcing the spirit into his chest. "Your powers are mine now, spirit!"

Matilda's shade collapsed at his feet, skin gone pale as the energy of her guardian spirit was drained away. Naturally, that was when Escad's younger self came running into the cave and immediately jumped to conclusions that were half-right at best. "Matilda!!" Spotting the girl on the floor, Mini-Escad brandished his sword at the unrepentant Mini-Irwin. "You DEMON! What did you do to Matilda!?"

And then everything went black to the sound of a large explosion.

———

Consciousness returned slowly. The cold feeling of stone beneath her told Rei that she was probably still in the mines, and was far more comfortable than it should have been. She forced her eyes open anyway, knowing that she'd only catch a cold or worse if she kept lying there. Levering herself into a sitting position, she found Escad—the real one—leaning against a wall just a couple of feet away. She was in a cave that she'd never seen before, dry but cold and populated with a larger-than-usual collection of luminescent fungus.

Escad just studied her for a moment as he observed, "I guess you've regained consciousness, Rei..."

"Doesn't feel like it," she mumbled, running a hand over her eyes. "Everything's kind of fuzzy around the edges."

Escad didn't inquire if she was up to getting home on her own. His question instead, and one that appeared to have been bothering him since she'd left him in Gato, was, "Whose side are you on? Are you with me, fighting for justice...Or with Daena, aiding demons and making mankind your enemy?"

On impulse, hoping that he'd stick around so she could talk to him and find out why he'd gone so crazy that he took his aggression out on virtually everyone around him, Rei told him, "I'm with you for now, I suppose."

He gave her another long look before he nodded and levered himself off the wall. "...Perhaps one day you will hound me as my enemy. But I will believe your words for now." And then he strode out of the cave without another word.

Rei sighed, feeling rather put out as the fuzziness began to retreat at last, and slowly got to her feet. Her pack was by the spot Escad had been standing, appearing unscathed by her latest adventure. The knife-fighter shouldered it and wearily sent Mana out in the familiar patterns.

———

Larc clomped down the hallway past the rooms containing the Jumi Rubens, Esmeralda, and the proud Diana, his canine nose filled with a very familiar scent overlaid with herbs, soap, and a distinct edge of sulfur. He followed it down to Olbohn's office and poked his head in, finding the Wisdom at his desk and a shape huddled beneath the blankets on Olbohn's bed. A flat, worn pack sat on the ground at its foot, a pair of shoes and furred leg-wraps abandoned beside it. And on a shelf above the bed were an easily-recognized set of hair-pipes.

"Why is Rei asleep in your bed, Olbohn?" inquired the dragoon in a confused rumble. Two of Olbohn's three eyes flicked to the slow rise and fall of the blankets and he shrugged, third eye continuing to peruse the papers his dominant hands were holding.

"She said she needed a quiet place to sleep," came the laconic reply, "and asked if she could borrow mine for a few hours. I told her she might as well get a use out of it since I hardly bother."

"But..._your_ office?" At least half a dozen people down here would welcome her presence more, and if she wanted the presence of a Wisdom, then why not any of those who dwelled above-ground? Or even Vadise?

Another shrug. "She said something about dreams. I imagine she hopes they will not follow her down here. Perhaps they won't." The third eye glanced glanced up at him and a wry, chiding smile curved the thin lips. "Come now, Larc. Think about those others she could request hospitality from on these corridors. How many of them are here as a result of her perceived failures? And an empty room leaves her open to hungry monsters or bored Shadoles."

Ah. Put _that_ way...Larc flattened his ears inside his helm for a moment before he asked, "What kind of dreams, do you suppose?"

Olbohn turned his head to focus all three eyes on the sprite who was deeply unconscious and likely wouldn't wake even if the roof came crashing down on her. And for a moment, Larc saw a distant expression cross the normally-aloof Wisdom's face. "Important ones," murmured Olbohn.

And then he turned back to his papers in a clear, pointed dismissal. Larc accepted it, but only so that he could go and visit the shades dwelling along this part of the corridor to find out if they knew what Rei had been doing in the past few months. And if they knew of any dreams.

———

Not entirely sure if that last bit fits, but I've been wanting to put it in for ages and this seems like a good spot. Yes, she dropped the herbs off at home, and yes, the dizziness will be explained later. Promise!


	29. Starcrossed Lovers

Hello, everybody! Sorry for such a long wait, but I wanted to upload the rest of the Faerie Arc all at once. It took a bit to write. n.n! Anyway, while the vague tendrils of ennui persist, I've been doing better at getting myself back into writing. My life remains pretty much unchanged, though I had some fun getting my brakes replaced yesterday.

**aRLegOdDesS**: Yup, I'm still alive. The choosing of sides doesn't really matter until the end of the Faerie Arc; if you choose Escad, he runs off ahead of you, gets as far as Irwin, and ends up going 'poof'. Whereas if you choose Daena to go with you, she sticks around to the end, but you don't find out about what happens to Matilda's body. Thus, I choose the third option every time.

**xenocanaan:** _—waves—_ I'm working on it. I want to get a few of the sidequests done before I really sink my teeth into the rest of the Jumi Arc, because I know that if I don't, I'll flake out on the rest.

**Reiko x 3:** Actually, the dreams are all the same one, the one of the Mana Tree. She's just not sleeping very well because of them, so she got grumpy and tired. _—sighs—_ And please don't torture pine beetles. You may not like them, but they're just trying to make a living like the rest of us. If you must kill them, please do so quickly.

**Airess Byrd: **_—waves—_

———

The herbs had barely survived their trip as it turned out. They'd only just started to wilt at the edges by the time Rei had gotten them home, or so the knife-fighter discovered the next morning when she'd returned from her brief sojourn into the Underworld. They were already hung in bunches in the workroom, leaving Rei to concentrate on plugging a few stray holes in the new thatch and on getting the pens in the monster corral mucked out properly.

As she was finishing up with the last pen, an empty one that was probably going to see at least a temporary occupant the next time she found a monster egg instead of elemental spirits, Rei became aware of a persistent buzz tugging on the hem of her mind's sleeve. _Come,_ it insisted, brushing against the part of her that could sense Mana. _Come. Soon. Hurry._

When that sense told her to do something, she could no more ignore it than she could ignore someone asking for help. Without hesitation she set the long-handled scrub-brush to lean against the wall and left the barn with an absent pat for the monsters drowsing outside in the corral. "Bud, Lisa!" she called, coming to a stop in front of the cottage.

Her apprentices came running from the orchard, a few stray bits of mulch on their sleeves betraying their activities. "Yes, Master Rei?" they chorused, a trick they had never totally shaken in their whole stay here. "What's up?" Bud added, eyebrows quirked towards his hair. "You don't interrupt us unless something's going on."

"I have to go somewhere," Rei told them, still searching out that pull on her spirit. "Gato, I think. I want Lisa to come with me."

The Elf girl blinked at that. "Me? Why?"

"This is because of that promise, right?" Bud prompted, catching on a bit faster. "This is something big, isn't it?"

"I think so," their teacher replied absently, most of her attention taken up by the growing pull. "And you've both been training hard. But I did promise when I took you out to meet the Wisdoms, Bud, that I'd take Lisa out with me on something big that I think you're up for." Focusing her attention on Lisa, Rei added, "Unless you'd rather stay here and work on your garden. There will be other adventures."

Lisa lifted her chin proudly and told her teacher, "And let this chance go to waste? As if. Let me go get ready."

"All right." Transferring her gaze to her other student, Rei gave Bud a lopsided smile. "This is important, Bud. You okay with this?"

He returned her lopsided smile with a brash one of his own, propping his hands on his hips and canting his head a bit to one side. "Come on, Master Rei. I've talked to all six surviving Wisdoms. No one's been heard of to do that since the last War. And fair's fair. Just try to come back before I poison myself with my own cooking."

The knife-fighter gave him a stronger smile, then, and went to grab her belt and weapons. "Lisa! Grab a pack and a change of clothes to be on the safe side," she called up the stairs through the sounds of rummaging. "I don't know how long we'll be gone or what we'll find when we get there."

Lisa called back an affirmative, clattering down the stairs with a pack slung over her shoulder that was nearly a duplicate for Rei's. It would be the exact same, in fact, if it wasn't a bit smaller and a great deal less worn. Rei gave a few last minute instructions to Bud, trusting him to take care of the rest, and placed one hand on Lisa's shoulder.

With a quiet whoosh of air, they were gone.

―――

Rei steadied Lisa as their feet came to rest on the stone walkway in front of the Temple of Healing in Gato Grottoes, head craning back to take in the beautiful carvings above the door as that feeling of urgency intensified. The golden-haired sprite led them into the shadowed depths of the interior, gaze barely catching on the sacred torches burning near the altar.

A quick turn left out of sheer habit brought them through the hallway to the Dreamweaving Room, where the same nun from before was standing watch. This time, however, she greeted the knife-fighter with a respectful nod as she stepped aside. "Daena has returned," was the quiet comment. "Please go in."

Rei nodded and slipped inside with Lisa on her heels.

Within the Dreamweaving Room stood Daena, appearing little the worse for wear after an extended stay in the Land of Faeries, and by the conversation, had arrived only moments before Rei and Lisa. "We should go, Matilda," the cat-girl was saying to the woman reclined upon the cushioned platform.

"What?" Matilda's voice was weaker than Rei remembered, and such a far cry from the vibrant sound that her girl-shadow had possessed that it nearly made the knife-fighter burst into tears. "Where are we going?"

Daena smiled gently down at her best friend. "To the Mindas Ruins for now. You can rest a bit there. Then you go to the Land of the Faeries. The flow of time is different there. Once you get there, you can prolong your life."

There was no hesitation as Matilda asked, "Did you see Irwin?"

Daena opened her mouth for a moment, closed it, then tried again. "Yes, I did."

"Did he say anything?"

There was a longer pause as Daena turned away from them all, tail flicking uneasily around her ankles. "......You have to see him, Matilda. He, not Escad, is the only one who can save you. And you are the only one who can stop him."

That was when a heavy weight shoved the door open, bruising Rei along the shoulder-blade as she yanked Lisa out of the path of the door and took the brunt of it, Escad bursting into the room with fury in his eyes. "Has the demon taken you, Daena!?" he cried, words bouncing off the vaulted ceiling to knot themselves into a violent tangle of echoes. "I will finish off Irwin! Your job is finished!"

Matilda sighed, no louder than the rattle of a leaf in a spring breeze, somehow drowning out the cacophonous echoes with just that noise. "Oh, Escad...Don't say that." Her frail hand reached out to the cat-girl. "Please stay by my side, Daena..."

Instinct pulled Lisa closer still even before Escad's sword rose and fell. Down went the two female warriors, Rei stunned by a blow to her head, Daena bleeding from a slash across her stomach. Lisa was left supporting her reeling teacher as Escad crouched by the injured cat-girl. "The wound is shallow enough. Think this over," he told her as Daena stared up at him in wide-eyed shock.

The next instant found her recovered enough to spit up at the stone-faced man, "You demon! What you said about learning from a Wisdom was a lie!"

Escad rose to his feet, scorning the young woman bleeding from his sword. "Say whatever you like."

And as before, the whisper-soft voice of the Gato Abbess drowned out the hateful echoes. "_Ksino tanami temeia hai'sol ayck'nem..._"

Daena lurched up despite her injury, fear blooming in her eyes as she reached out a hand towards her friend. "Matilda! You're not strong enough to cast spells!" she cried less than a heartbeat before light flooded the room. When it faded, the only ones left there were Lisa and Escad. And with a snarl and a curse, Escad left the poor confused Elf girl alone in the Dreamweaving Room.

———

The aged leader of the Gato Grottoes nuns lay stretched on warm stone, the air humid on her wrinkled face. She had done it. She had even taken two people with her. And it had been so long since she'd dared a spell that she had completely forgotten just how much casting wore her out.

The soft rush of air against her face warned her that someone had come—the heavy pad of footsteps told her that the person was large. Very large. She managed to turn her head and open her eyes to see if by some chance she knew them—only to find strength surging into her limbs at the sight of a thick mane of russet fur gleaming as it disappeared up the stairs. "Don't go!" she cried, hobbling up the stairs after that precious sight.

And what a sight was waiting for her at the top! The panoramic view of the jungle below was of little interest in comparison to the male posed casually before the altar stones of the ancient temple. A good seven feet if he was an inch, he gazed down with arrogance narrowing teal eyes from amidst the wild tumble of a leonine mane. Muscles rippled beneath every inch of the fur covering him from head to toe, from the violet fur on his torso to the fawn pelt on his feline legs.

"Irwin!" breathed the Abbess, feeling joy bubbling up in her heart. "You are alive! I never gave up hoping that you survived..."

A faint hint of some emotion she dared not name seemed to soften the frozen gaze. "Matilda...You haven't changed at all." From kitten's purr to rumbling growl, his voice still sent shivers up her spine. Pleasant, tingly ones.

She couldn't help but snort at the attempt at courtesy. "Don't be silly, Irwin," she scoffed with some of her old energy, putting one hand on her hip. "Look at me! I have become a wrinkly grandma in the past ten years."

He seemed very reluctant to admit such a thing. "...Your appearance has changed," he said at last.

She huffed and plunked herself down on one of the altar stones. She was too old to stay standing for long these days. "I have also become quite pessimistic, too. But I did not know that demons aged. Look at you!"

Irwin dropped his gaze to one of his own broad, taloned hands as though noticing it for the first time. Tilting it back and forth, he replied, "The Land of Faeries strongly reflects one's thoughts. You can form your own appearance by imagining it."

"Is that why you want to take me to the Land of Faeries?"

A brief, grating sigh. "That is one of the reasons," he admitted.

"The Faeries will not accept me," Matilda reminded him gently.

It was Irwin's turn to huff, and he did, bringing his focus back up to her. "I have the power to make them accept whatever I say. You accept things without question, like the rules of heartless humans!" His voice softened to velvet as he stretched out a hand as though trying to catch something. "Matilda...why do you exist in this world? Your life is not about walking the path others make!"

Oh, yes. And those words, spoken to her in various ways and in different times throughout their childhood, had been the reason she had fallen in love with him in the first place. So she gave him the sweetest smile she could muster and told him, "I understand what you are trying to say, Irwin. But we do not always have a choice."

He stared at her in silence, his will sliding against hers while the seconds passed. And for every moment that the shared gaze stayed unbroken, another ounce of resignation seemed to weigh on his shoulders.

Close enough to touch, she reached out and patted his hand as she would have and had done as a child, when life had set a very large puzzle before her reclusive friend. "The only choice I have is," she murmured into the wind sweeping around them, "to be free."

———

_Ow, my head!_ If this is what others felt when _she_ teleported them, she would really have to stop and get used to walking everywhere again. Rei spread her feet wide to steady herself as the world did a few playful spins around her and resolved into the entrance to the Mindas Ruins—and a pair of Faeries that were glaring absolute daggers at her.

"I won't let you interfere!" one of the Faeries snarled, raising a hand and sending the thickest whirl of Mana that Rei had felt outside of a stone spinning straight for her.

The next time the world stopped dancing a reel around her, she was in another place she recognized—the chamber where she had defeated the ruler of the succubi when Teapo had gotten lost in the Ruins. The room wore a thin coating of dust, giving the knife-fighter hope that the incubus hadn't managed to revive since then.

More important, however, was the need to know if the entrance to the hidden chamber would open from this side without the Flowerling girl beyond being aware of her presence. She splashed through the puddles and the few monsters that guarded the hall still and shoved hard on the trapdoor masquerading as a decorative mosaic.

It slid aside with a rumble and a screech of stone on stone, letting in fresh air and very welcomed sunlight. Rei didn't waste any time hefting herself out and running down the steps to the courtyard below, wanting only to find anyone else who had gotten caught in the spell and to find out if Lisa was safe.

She practically ran into Niccolo the merchant rabbit down in the courtyard. He beamed down at her and waggled his ears as he went into his sales pitch. "Hello, there, Rei! I'm the wandering Niccolo, peddler of smiles, as you very well know! You look worried!" He gave her a wink and continued with, "You must be in a hurry, but you're lost, right?"

"A bit," Rei admitted, a little off-kilter at finding him here of all places. "You haven't seen anyone else, have you?"

"Well, you're in good hands now," chuckled the rabbit-man instead of answering. "I'll guide you to the Tower of Wind for only 500 Lucre."

"Oh, fine! Just so long as _someone's_ there!" Rei cried, shoving the money into his hands impatiently. He happily accepted, counted out the coins to reassure himself—earning him a dangerous glare from the knife-fighter—and clapped his hands together once.

The world blinked. That was the only way Rei could describe standing in one place one moment, and a totally new, utterly unfamiliar place the next. But she tossed a hasty thanks to Niccolo as she bolted up the worn stone steps of the new monolithic building. She could hear fighting on the fitful breezes and two familiar voices raised in anger.

They turned out to be Daena and Escad, battling fiercely across a wide square of stone flooring edged on either side with carved stands rising to either side. "You have become a demon like him, Daena!" Escad was shouting as he swung at the cat-girl.

Daena dodged left, shouting back that there was no difference between any of them. And then paused in startlement as a rock exploded between them on the far wall. Escad turned to look at the same time she did, to find a furious Rei pulling her knives from their sheaths on her hips. "I have had a very long week," she began slowly as she settled into an offensive stance with her knives raised chin-high, "and my patience is thinner than it should be. So I will ask this only once: _where is my student_?"

"The Elf girl?" Escad sneered. "She was still in the Dreamweaving Room the last I saw of her. She can stay there for all it concerns me. Now help me take care of this demon-addled wench so that I can go hunt down Irwin."

"Don't listen to him, Rei, he's—"

"_Both of you, be __silent_," Rei bit out, knuckles white from the strength of her grasp. "You're blind, the both of you. I would let you rip each other to pieces right now if it wasn't for one very important thing." Her gaze fell on Escad and her eyes narrowed. "_He_ would have struck a child. _My_ child. For that, I will see you senseless on these stones, Escad."

"I knew you would turn on me, traitor." Escad disregarded Daena entirely and settled into a stance of his own, leather grip creaking beneath his grasp.

"If you had left us alone, I would have let this stupid, jealous feud run its idiotic course."

Escad went pale, then flushed a dark red clear up to his ears. "_Jealous_!? How dare you!?" He flung himself at her then, sword drawing a razored arc through the air over their heads to bite into the stone where she had been standing a heartbeat ago. "What do _you_ know?"

"Enough," Rei bit back, knives flickering out in rapid succession. "It was never about his blood, was it, Escad? It was because Matilda fell in love with him and you couldn't stand it."

"He's evil!" the Knight roared, swinging 'round into a diagonal slice that was meant to open up the golden-haired sprite from shoulder to hip. "He'll bring the world to destruction—"

Pink-clad knuckles with the weight of Vizel gold behind them planted themselves firmly on his jaw, sending him flying back with a clatter and a crash of weapon and armor. "How much of it is for love!?" Rei shouted furiously, stalking across the new distance between them. "How much because he wants her to be free of the duties she never wanted? Did you ever even _think_ about what she wanted? Do you even _care_ anymore? Pokiehl gave me the story of that day, Escad, I've _seen_ what Irwin has done for love!"

"_SHUT UP_!!" Escad howled, rising to his feet in one fluid motion and bringing up his sword to take her head once and for all. And Daena, forgotten until now, brought her doubled fists crashing down on his head. He faltered for a moment, rasping out, "He doesn't...doesn't deserve...her..." and then dropped to the ground as consciousness fled. His sword rattled for a moment against the stone flooring and then fell as silent as its master.

Rei stood there with her chest heaving and her rage struggling to break free to wreak the kind of havoc that Drakonis had forced her into upon the man at her feet; it took her a minute or two before she could wrestle it back into the depths of her heart where it belonged. But when it did, she dropped to one knee and pressed her fingertips to his neck in search of his pulse.

"Sad thing is, he's as much a blind fool as you that he might just agree with you," she murmured, finding his heartbeat steady and in no danger of stopping at all soon. So she rose, and turned to walk up the steps to the top of the tower.

Daena hesitated a moment before she hurried to fall into step behind the knife-fighter. "Rei?" she ventured uncertainly.

"Yes, Daena?"

"Is Matilda really...?"

"Ask her yourself. I'm sure she's up here somewhere if this is where we've ended up converging."

"Oh." For the life of her, Rei couldn't decide if the word was flavored more strongly with unhappiness or relief. "Are you okay?"

There was at least one cut that was soaking blood into the fabric of her left arm-guard, and another just above the leg-wrap of her left calf that told her there was a defensive hole she needed to plug, but all Rei replied with was a mild, "I've been a great deal worse. I'm just glad I know that Lisa's safe." A few more stairs and then Rei glanced over her shoulder for the first time. "What about you? He did get you a fair slice back at the Temple."

Daena mustered up a smile and waved a hand. "I'm fine. It's almost completely closed by now, even with all the jumping around."

Rei nodded and went back to climbing stairs in silence. Thirty or so more later, they cleared the top and found Matilda sitting on an altar stone, wearing a small, content smile. "Matilda!" Daena cried, leaping forward and catching her friend in a brief hug. "I'm so glad you're safe!"

"Daena..." murmured the Abbess, patting her arm in reassurance. "Yes, I'm fine."

Taking a step back, but keeping her hands on the frail shoulders, Daena looked around them and found a particular hulking shape to be missing. "Where's Irwin? You need to go the the Land of Faeries!"

"I am not going," Matilda informed her with gentle firmness.

Daena's ears stood straight up in shock. "What!? But...why? Where did Irwin go?"

"Thank you for being so concerned about me, Daena," Matilda said with a smile as she patted the gray-furred arm again. "But seeing Irwin was good enough. I feel much better."

The cat-girl shook her head, bell-earrings chiming madly in denial. "No, that's not good enough! Tell me the truth! You _are_ in love with Irwin, aren't you, Matilda!?"

Calm serenity. "Yes, I am."

"Then go to the Land of Faeries with him," begged Daena, dropping to one knee and gazing up pleadingly. "Don't die like this! Irwin will go and bring catastrophe without you!"

"Daena...Irwin and I do not intrude on each other's freedom. If he decides to destroy the world, I will gladly accept it." Matilda's face was firm, implacable, unwavering despite the heartbreak in slit-pupil eyes.

"Then what about all the others who will die?" Daena asked softly, hands resting on her friend's knees. "They will lose their lives along with their freedom!"

Rei had stayed silent until now as she had ministered to her injuries. Glancing over at the emotional tableau, she muttered, "That's what I am for, obviously."

Matilda gave the knife-fighter a nearly-imperceptible nod of agreement before she brought her attention back to the cat-girl kneeling before her. "Daena, believe in me, and believe in yourself. You cannot hide the truth or the future. One must do what one believes in. That is the only way."

"Matilda...I only want you two to be happy in the Land of Faeries. Why can't you understand that?"

Her hands were given another pat as the Abbess eased herself off the altar stone so that she stood as straight as her aged body would allow. "Do not worry," Matilda told her dearest friend softly. "I know what brings me happiness. Daena, do whatever makes you happy."

Daena followed her example and rose to her own feet, ears drooping in grief. "My happiness is in making others happy. Is that so wrong an idea?" she wanted to know.

Matilda only gave her a sympathetic look and shook her head. "But if I think the same way as you do, we will never be happy."

"......So, what's Irwin going to do now?" Daena asked.

She was given a shrug as the frail old woman began to hobble towards the steps. "He said he is going to try to destroy this world."

"Destroy the world?" scoffed the cat-girl, quickly stepping forward and easing her arm beneath Matilda's, offering silent support to the stubborn Abbess. "Oh, come on, Irwin!"

"The Goddess created all life," was Matilda's philosophical reply. "Her will is all. Now let us return to Gato."

"So this is what the Mana Goddess has decided?" Daena sighed unhappily. "Oh, Matilda!"

"Oh, for the love of Salamander," grumped Rei as she laid her hands on their shoulders. "You four are too dramatic for your own good. Now if you don't mind, how about _I_ teleport us back? No offense, Matilda."

———

Fight scene. Hates it. It needed writing, but haaaates it.


	30. Heaven's Gate

———

Lisa tackled her teacher in a relieved hug the second they appeared back in the Temple, words tumbling over themselves as she exclaimed over the bloody state of Rei's clothes and the wear-and-tear obvious on the other fighter in the group. She firmly made no mention of the missing Knight and instead helped Daena return Matilda to the Dreamweaving Room's padded chaise.

"The Wyrm of Light, Lucemia, descended to earth and swallowed seven cities," Matilda's voice was soft enough that Rei had to be careful or she'd miss something in the incredible acoustics of the room. "It burned itself to death swallowing a volcano. I hear its hard shell still exists, hundreds of years after its death. Irwin is going to revive the creature to bring chaos to the world once again."

Daena flattened her ears amidst a jingle of her earrings. "Then why didn't you stop him? I don't understand."

"Why must I stop him?" came the curious reply. "I love him. Giving him freedom is my happiness."

"But don't you want to be at the side of the person you love?" Daena tried, desperate to steer things the way she'd hoped was the best.

"I was always with him. Only our bodies were far apart."

"You're making it sound like you're a hypocrite!" the cat-girl spat, whirling to pace before the chaise. "You can both live on and be together in the Land of Faeries! That is for the sake of both you _and_ the world!"

Matilda took a deep breath—Rei, who had a great deal of experience with such sounds, recognized it as someone throttling a growing sense of frustration—and let a bit of steel slip into the worn velvet of her words. "Daena...These will be my last words. Please listen." She waited until she had Daena's attention before continuing. "The imperial soldiers simply fight by their emperor's order. The pirates steal others' belongings because they desire them. Who is more sinful?"

The temple warrior thought about it a moment and then stated, "They're both stupid."

"Neither one is sinful," corrected the Abbess firmly. "It was the Goddess who gave us freedom. To deny the freedom of others is the true sin."

Bells chimed madly as Daena spun, arms flung wide. "Then I'll kill him! Is that what I'm supposed to do?" was the angry demand.

"If that is what you desire to do, then it is."

Rei watched the cat-girl wilt visibly. It was pretty obvious to both the knife-fighter and the Abbess that Daena didn't really want to do such a thing. If there was one wish Daena could make, it would be for the four members of her tiny family to live together in peace again. "What about you?" Daena asked her best friend at last, anger lost like water from a broken cup. "What are you going to do about this?"

Matilda gave her a serene smile. "Once I am sure that you, Irwin, and Rei remain free...then the curtain will fall on my role in this world."

Daena fell to her knees beside the chaise, ears flattening in distress. "Please don't say that, Matilda," the cat-girl begged softly. "You're only twenty-six! There is so much left to do in life! Don't leave me! I still want to be your little sister, Matilda..."

"You can do as you please, Daena."

"Me, too?" Rei asked, stepping into the conversation as Daena rose slowly to her feet.

The Abbess nodded, serene smile still in place. "Yes."

"Alright." Rei beckoned Lisa forward and placed a hand on the girl's shoulder when her apprentice reached her side. "Then here's what I suggest. Lisa and I will go and find Irwin and see if we can't thump some sense in his thick, furry head." Ignoring her student's disbelieving splutters, she continued blithely, "Meanwhile, Daena stays here and keeps that wound from opening up again."

"Yes. I will stay at Matilda's side," the cat-girl agreed with evident relief.

"Good. That's two votes for my idea. Matilda?"

A thin, wrinkled hand reached into the sleeve of her habit and pulled out something that glittered and sparkled in the sunlight from the high window. "Please take this, I feel that you will need it. May the Goddess' blessing be with you."

Rei accepted the heart-shaped brooch of gold and emerald with a respectful bow of the head and pretended to tuck it into her belt-pouch even as it faded into motes of Mana energy in her hand. "Okay. That's three votes. Lisa, we're heading out."

"But Master Rei—!"

Rei just put her hand on Lisa's pack and gently pushed her student out the door with a last goodbye to the two occupants. Once out in the hallway, she took her hand away and stepped into the lead. "Come on, Lisa."

"Seriously, Master Rei, how are we going to find where Irwin's raising Lucemia?" Lisa asked, stretching her legs to keep up with her teacher's quickening pace. They hit the causeway outside together, wind blowing strands of dusty gold and strands of pink in fitful bursts as Rei turned her gaze out across the valley towards the waterfall.

She nearly had to shout to be heard over the wind, eyes fixed on a certain point near the mouth of the waterfall. "A long time ago, Xan sent me a letter with a rough map of this continent sketched out in charcoal. He was missing places because, he said, of clouds and low-lying fog that blocked the landscape. I asked him in my reply, what did he mean, _clouds_?"

"I don't think I like where this is going..." muttered the Elf-girl, following her teacher's gaze to a large, bowl-shaped construction perched on a thin finger of stone.

Rei grinned, anticipation making her eyes sparkle. "He said you got one hell of a view when you were flying."

———

They stopped at the base of the waterfall long enough for Rei to gather a handful of strong-smelling herbs that she tucked away in a pair of cloths in her pack before climbing to the first place Sandra had ever escaped from the knife-fighter. Whatever bitter feelings that remained about that day, however, were overturned by the sight that awaited the sprite and Elf at the top.

The size of the nest had given Rei hints about the size of the occupant, but actually seeing the famous Cancun Bird sitting there and watching them right back put it in a whole new dimension. It had to be as tall as three chocobo _at the shoulder_, and the knife-fighter hesitated to guess at what the actual wing-span had to be of such a huge bird. And although it certainly didn't have the beak of a predator, the head was of a size that swallowing a Rattler Boa the size of Tsuta wouldn't be much of a problem.

_Salamander and Shade,_ _her eye has to be as big as _my_ head_, Rei thought in wonder. Though she also had to wonder if the bird was a 'he' or a 'she'. The nest said 'she', but the plumage...The Cancun Bird's plumage from beak to shoulders and down the belly was the pale rose of dawn, with all the shades of day and sunset in between. Deep, summer-sky blue for the wings, red shading through orange and back to blue again for the tail. And that was just for the parts she could _see_. Females of the bird world weren't known for bright plumage, Sirens and the like aside.

"Coo?" inquired the Bird of its guests, tilting that elegant head to one side to get a better look. _Eep_, went Lisa, promptly hiding behind her teacher.

"Hello," began Rei cautiously. Xan had said the Bird was friendly, but... "We were wondering if we could ask you a favor..."

And that was when the world took a sickening turn beneath her feet. And while most of Rei knew perfectly well that her feet were nice and steady on rock that wasn't going anywhere anytime soon, the rest of her was caught up in a whirl of Mana that felt just plain_ wrong_, the world crying out as something big and heavy and old enough to have become a solid part of itself was bodily ripped from beneath its skin.

_Ooooh, I shouldn't have had that citrusquid this morning..._Rei swallowed hard and took a fierce grip on that part of her that could sense Mana, shoving it deep below her awareness until it was just a faint ache in her bones. She felt like she had the first hints of a flu beginning to chew on her, but she could fight.

"Coo!" squawked the Bird, head turned in the direction that the breakfast-review-inducing rush of energy had come from, all its feathers now decidedly ruffled. "Coo-roo!"

Swallowing one more time to make sure the contents of her stomach were as secure as she was hoping, Rei took a deep breath. "Yeah. We came to ask you about that. Could you give us a ride?"

———

Astride a back as broad as her kitchen table with a bit more room, Rei kept a hand on the arms clutched tight around her waist and took in the sight with a growing sense of awe. Beyond any of the inhabited lands they'd flown, she and Lisa and the accommodating Cancun Bird, seeking out the shell of the great Wyrm, Lucemia. They were approaching it now as it hovered—_hovered!—_in midair, several hundred feet up. She and her student would never have reached it without the Bird's help, that was quite obvious now.

_I'll give Irwin one thing,_ the knife-fighter thought as she took in a shape that was a mottled, olive-greenish shade against the otherwise-empty sky, _he sure as hell doesn't do anything by halves._

She had always thought that the legends about Lucemia had been...exaggerated a little, at least about its size. Big enough to swallow seven cities? No way. Nothing could be that big. She had been willing to believe that Lucemia had been large enough to _crush_ the cities it had been said to devour, crush them right into dust and earth. Writers were always exercising artistic license, weren't they?

The monstrous shape before her told her that the stories had actually been _understating_ things a bit. Serpent-like, no visible limbs, with a head startlingly like Akravator's but with a square muzzle instead of a narrow beak, Lucemia's decomposing body was still long enough to be able to touch its nose to Haven Tree Cottage and squash a few trees of Rosiotti's Jungle with the bulk of its tail, with Domina and Gaeus crushed beneath the coils of its belly. So long as it had taken a breath between them and maybe a drink of water, Rei now believed it entirely possible that Lucemia had gulped down more than half a dozen cities.

"Goddess bless us," Rei breathed in awe. Where did Irwin _get_ the kind of power it must have taken to raise this leviathan from its earthly repose? It couldn't have all come from Matilda. She'd seen the spirit that had dwelled within the Abbess—the little Wisp could have made this beastie sneeze in life, and that would have likely been it.

"Are we really doing this?" Lisa yelled over the rush of the wind, her arms wrapped firmly around her teacher's waist. The Elf girl sounded like she very much hoped the answer was 'no'.

"Come on, Lisa!" Rei yelled back, tossing a grin over her shoulder, "Where's your sense of adventure?"

Lisa's arms gripped tighter as the Cancun Bird tilted its wings into a banking turn and told her teacher, "It's still got both feet firmly on the ground! Which is where I want to be!"

Rei snorted hard enough for the vibrations to reach her apprentice. "Come on, Lees, think about it! We're about to step foot on a creature no one's seen in centuries! Okay, yeah, it's dead and will probably smell horrible—"

"Not helping!"

"—but there's probably treasure and interesting molds we could use in spell work all over and maybe inside it!" Rei continued blithely as she dug out a thick climbing rope from her pack and began knotting a loop at one end. "Not to mention we're going to try and save the world from someone who wants to squash us flat. How can you _not_ want to do this?"

"Because it's very high off the ground and I'm not sure I can!"

Rei tilted her head to look over her shoulder at the Elf girl, a wry smile pulling at her lips. "Now that is utter nonsense. _I_ am your teacher in weapons, just like magic, and _I_ say you are more than ready to tackle a demon-blooded, lovesick idiot with delusions of grandeur."

She saw Lisa blink and silently repeat that last line in disbelief. "Lovesick?" the Elf girl yelled in curiosity. "Really?"

"Oh, yeah. Awkward, tongue-tied, and can't admit his feelings even to himself." Rei grinned again. "Think of him as a fuzzier, more competent version of Gilbert, and add a couple of emotional hang-ups." Still grinning even as her student's arms relaxed around her waist, the knife-fighter let out a sharp whistle to gain the attention of their ride.

One large, round eye slanted towards them and Rei held out the end of the rope she'd knotted into a wide loop. An acknowledging caw was the reply as the slender beak was tucked close to the chest. There was a moment of wobble while Rei hooked her rope on the beak and tugged gently. A moment later their flight had smoothed out again and they were approaching the middling-end of the huge Wyrm's body.

A few quick heartbeats after that, feathers were rustling as the Bird back-winged into a slow, crawling glide. Rei made certain that everything she had was secure and then stood, drawing Lisa up along with her. "Okay, cubling, hang on tight!"

Lisa's eyes went wide and she clamped down with renewed vigor. "Oh, you have got to be kiiiiiiiiddiiiiing!" she shrieked even as her teacher snugged an arm around her shoulders and tilted gracefully sideways with one arm firmly wrapped in the rope.

Rei's only response was a peal of exhilarated laughter as they plummeted down, rope-entangled arm spread wide, the other keeping her terrified student safely against her side. For a few moments that left the world sharp and clear to honed senses there was only the unfamiliar, addicting sense of free-fall. Then, with a loud crunching and a short skid, teacher and student were down, standing on the back of a Wyrm that had taken its last breath long ago.

The knife-fighter waved up to the circling Bird and started reeling in her rope once it had been dropped at the other end. With a caw of goodbye the Cancun Bird flapped a little harder and regained speed, angling its flight back to Gato.

About to tuck the length of braided hemp away, Rei paused and considered the arms still clamped fiercely around her abdomen. "Lisa? Lisa, hon, you can let go now. I'm going to need those ribs in a little bit."

Head tilted to one side, Rei saw Lisa's mouth work for a moment before she burst out with, "_Are you CRAZY!?_" and leaped away like a scalded cat.

"Probably," Rei answered cheerfully, stuffing the rope back into its pocket and taking a few long breaths laced with excitement. "Runs in the family, haven't you heard?"

"You could have killed us!"

"Nonsense. That was what the rope was for. In case we missed. Besides, I'm sure the Cancun Bird can catch a couple of people in midair. It's certainly big enough." Rei grinned even more broadly, watching her student huff and puff up like a cat who had gotten its fur rubbed the wrong way by a whole pack of toddlers. It was hard getting Lisa to lose her temper, but it looked like Rei had found an excellent way to do it. "Why so frazzled? If you're scared of heights you should have said something."

"Scared of heights? _Scared of heights_? We're over five _hundred feet_ off the _ground_!" Lisa growled, yanking at her ponytail. "Any sensible person would be scared to death! _Especially_ when their teacher _jumps_ with them from the back of a giant bird!"

Rei just ruffled her hair and took her first real steps across the back that was over twenty feet wide from where they were standing. The scales beneath them seemed solid enough—no sudden pitfalls, hopefully—like the hide holding the scales together had long since turned to stone. She was about to ask Lisa if the Elf girl would never be willing to do something like that again, but thought better when she abruptly remembered that it was _Bud_ who shared her blood family's overly-adventurous nature.

Sighing, the knife-fighter turned to her irate student and dipped her head in apology. "You're right, Lisa. I'm sorry."

Mid-huff, Lisa blinked at her teacher. "Say what?"

"I'm sorry. You're right. There were a couple of safer ways to get us across the distance. I just got carried away." Walking back to the Elf girl, Rei knelt and looked up in a very startled pair of amethyst eyes. "I shouldn't have scared you like that. I just forget sometimes that not everyone has my brand of insanity."

Lisa was at something of a loss. In the year and change that she and her brother had lived with and studied under the knife-fighter, she'd only heard her master apologize a handful of times. And she'd only _heard_ of Rei apologizing to others almost as rarely. They just weren't something she made a habit of saying casually. Taking a deep breath, the Elf girl nodded back at Rei. "Okay. Just...let's not do that again. I don't have wings, and I don't like jumping off from places like I do."

"Deal." Rei rose to her feet again and looked around. "Now that that's settled, I have a pop quiz question for you."

"What, here?"

"Yup, here. If I were a misguided, overly-dramatic, angry demon-blooded guy hell-bent on turning the world sideways and giving it a good shake, where would I be?"

Lisa thought about that for a moment and then shrugged. "The head, I suppose. It would be the easiest place to control the rest of the body from there."

Rei gave her a smile and turned her feet to point up the gradual slope of the Wyrm's back. "Okay. Heads it is. Mind your step, the scales have been worn smooth in a couple of places."

Or completely crushed, as was the case a good thirty yards or more up the ridged spine. Something had impacted the hard outer shell with enough force to render passage impossible from where the knife-fighter paused to survey the damage. Her gaze was drawn down towards a ridge of thicker scales, overlapping a little closer to Lucemia's belly, and the dark hole rent in the Wyrm's tough hide. Lisa followed her teacher's gaze to the hole and sighed.

"We're going to have to travel _inside_ this thing, aren't we?"

"'Fraid so," came the equally-resigned answer while Rei dug into her pack and came up with the two cloths from before. "I thought we might need these. Here." Handing her student one, the knife-fighter showed her how to tie the cloth into a mask, with the herb leaves trapped between layers of cloth. "Breathe through your mouth as much as you can, and in the name of all that's good in magic, _watch your step_."

"This going to be so disgusting..."

Inside the beast was a wide path where the spinal cord used to be, only bone with some thin shreds of muscle holding up the skin they'd just been walking on. There was plenty of room for movement, but the sheer, overwhelming _reek_ of rotting flesh and rampant mold-growth nearly had both females gagging even through the cloth. Their footsteps made a kind of squeaky, squishy noise in the thick carpet of mold, knobby growths of greens and purples rising to coat the walls of the ribcage all around them.

Rei ventured in a few steps, heard the noise her feet made, and shuddered as she lifted up one shoe, only to put it hastily back down. "Ugh. Burn these when we get home?"

"You were thinking about keeping them? As if!" Lisa spread her arms a bit for balance on the vaguely slippery 'ground' beneath their feet, forehead wrinkled in concentration. "Burn them. And we do it well away from the house. Wisp and Shade, it stinks in here!"

Rei looked ahead to where a few monsters were emerging from dens within the mold. "And we're about to become very busy," she added, resigned. "Like we weren't going to have enough trouble as it was."

———

When the two were at a point that Rei estimated was a third of the way to the head, they met Selva. The Wisdom was hovering comfortably just above the scales of Lucemia's back, a few feet away from one of the holes punctured in the Wyrm's long side. Rei and Lisa emerged from the reeking depths of the shadows and there he was, smiling in a way that put Rei's hackles up.

"Selva," Rei called over the rush of the wind, "fancy meeting you here. To what do we owe the pleasure?"

"Nothing in particular," the Wisdom replied with remarkable cheer. "So...You know, Irwin is just toying with you! Can you take it?"

Rei _knew_ some of those impassible spots had been fresh. Now she knew why. "Of course!" she told the Wisdom with all the confidence she could muster. "We aren't going to let some overgrown fairy-cat get the better of us!"

Selva only chuckled and flew up and out of sight without another word. Rei started muttering uncomplimentary things about nosy people who had nothing better to do than make themselves a nuisance as she resumed the climb towards their goal. Lisa just shook her head and enjoyed the fresh air while it lasted.

———

Rei took in a huge lungful of clean air after she dropped the second of two Cockatrice, pink feathers scattering on the constant wind back the way she'd come. Lisa knocked the other one over the side, ignoring its squawkings as it got its wings untangled and flapped off in an indignant huff, coming to stand beside her teacher with her ever-faithful broom slung across a shoulder.

It had been one of the worst trips they'd ever been on, climbing the massive length of Lucemia's body, sometimes out in fresh air, sometimes in the reeking depths of its rotted interior, with another visit from Selva when they'd been two-thirds of the way up. Lisa had begun to think that they'd actually died after falling off the Cancun Bird or something and that this was their very own little slice of eternal torment, but lo! There was the head at last, with a figure hunkered down on the end of the muzzle. For something the size of a person, it was pretty good sized. Lisa would be willing to bet an entire month's allowance that the figure was going to be at least a foot or two taller than her teacher.

Rei was less impressed, and merely rested a hand on Lisa's shoulder for a moment before she stepped forward with her fingers wrapping themselves around the worn hilts of golden knives. "Come on, Lisa," came the soft summons over the wind. "Let's go see where this meeting takes us."

Irwin was waiting for them by the time they'd walked the last piece of distance to the base of the skull. He was truly lionlike as he stood there with his arms crossed, fierce wind whipping the long scarlet braid of his hair over his shoulder to tangle in his mane. From neck to waist he sported a thick pelt of violet fur that was a handspan-thick, a plusher coat than the smoother pelt of beige that coated him from the waist down. From either side of his head were ivory-hued horns that swept up and back like spears.

Narrow teal eyes slit further when Rei took a wide-legged stance a few yards away, her hands ready on her knives and her hair-pipes a faint chime as the wind tugged firmly against her own hair. "Alright, Irwin," she called to him, Lisa a ready shadow just behind her, "we're here. What are you planning with this poor shell of a beast?"

Arrogance writ itself across furred cheekbones as Irwin spread his clawed hands in the beginnings of a spell. "I am here to eradicate from this world the ugly seeds called humans," he replied, voice a growling bass that broke the river of air like a thrown boulder. "It is your fate to perish! You, who have stolen so much from the land."

Rei couldn't help but smile when Lisa propped her hands on her hips and huffed, "Destroy the world!? As IF!"

"Well put, cubling," Rei told her student in approval. "Now, how about helping me teach this furball how to tell the difference between humans and other races?"

Irwin gave Lisa no chance to answer as he surged forward into a cloud of fiery motes, massive paws the size of the elf-girl's teacher reaching angrily for them from within the cloud. Lisa dodged left, Rei to the right as a huge beast that easily rivaled the size of the long-ago Master of Lake Kilma emerged from the cloud of magic and snarled at them.

As a matter of fact, it was almost of a size with Vadise, though far bulkier in muscle—especially around the shoulders and legs. It was almost bipedal, with a pair of short, stubby wings that flared across the broad back. Chains wrapped wrists and ankles, spikes protruded from the elbows, jutting from the shaggy, maroonish fur that grew long everywhere but chest and belly. There were hints of green throughout, matching the webbing spread between the maroon vanes of the wings. And the horns that had once been proud ornaments were now deadly weapons, sweeping low back from the feline skull with a third jutting back from the middle of head. Secondary horns nearly the same color of the fur curved just inside the main pair, declaring that head-butts from Irwin's new shape were something to be avoided.

As were his paws, Rei discovered about three seconds later as those massive paw-hands came whistling for her again. The gray things wrapping wrists and ankles weren't chains, but a flexible kind of growth that opened into a ring of spikes when force was applied.

And from a face that was no longer remotely human, a pair of glowing eyes that were a far more virulent green than Rei's own burned in anger and hate.

After that, Rei and Lisa spent a great deal of time simply dodging, trying to work out any kind of pattern in Irwin's fighting style and what kind of magics he was still able to use. There was the one where he used seismic force to create first a ring, then an outward-folding star of destructive energy. That one was fairly easy to avoid. Harder was the one where he would actually use those disproportional wings to go airborne, giving himself some distance between him and his enemies before loosing a chain explosion of red energy spheres that burst in a painful show of strength.

Rei kept flinging herself between her student and that second kind off attack, crying out as her skin blistered and burned across her shoulders, back, and arms. Neither were her legs spared, the fur wraps scorched below flesh that howled in agony with every step. Her armor protected her from the worst, but she did not go unscathed by any means.

In return, Lisa laid into Irwin with every chance she got, spell-enhanced broom dealing as much damage as any spear of Rei's crafting could do, voice rising in harmony with the magical, musical instruments she and Rei carried.

Rei wasn't just taking damage, either. She, like Lisa, was dishing it right back, leaping around and over the lashing paws, darting up his exposed back to lay waste to the muscles that controlled his wings despite her own pain. Dance of Roses, Pouncing Cat, every ability in Rei's arsenal that she could remember and could do as much damage as she could do, she used with no regard to the energy required. Her acrobatics kept the majority of Irwin's attention on her and not on her student, for the knife-fighter had dangerously underestimated the strength of their opponent and wanted as little of Irwin's awareness to be on her less-experienced companion.

After several sets of blisters Rei finally had the space to notice that there was a few moments where Irwin's true shape blazed through his enhanced shape. That focused her even more, and she began taking the highly-risky move of ducking within reach of those deadly paws in order to carve away at Irwin's core.

That distracted Irwin even further, and he began lashing out with greater ferocity and strength. One too many blows got through Rei's pattern of defense and sent Lisa tumbling, dropping the Elf girl in a stunned heap by the undulating head of Lucemia.

All bets were really off, then. Rei ignored the damage being heaped upon her bleeding shoulders now, standing firm between her downed student and the raging Irwin. But that began to take its toll on the knife-fighter, sapping her energy and strength with each blow she took.

One knife was knocked out of her hands and went skittering over the side of the Wyrm, glittering as it tumbled through the void of empty air towards the ground. Rei gritted her teeth and switched to a harp, barely getting enough space to make any kind of retaliation as Irwin's ferocity increased.

The other knife went the same way as the first a minute or two later. The golden-haired sprite bared her teeth at the sneering Irwin and prepared for the worst pain in her life as those paws came swinging down at her for what would be the last time.

Music exploded from somewhere behind them, mingling with the angry shout of a young, terrified female. Aura's golden light burst into being just in front of Rei, sizzling blood-drenched fur and sending Irwin careening back in agony. Rei took that time to grab up a shard of scale that had been broken off in the course of the battle and lunged, shoving it deep into Irwin's chest with the goal of finding his bedamned heart once and for all.

The two combatants staggered apart from each other, Irwin collapsing into a loose-limbed pile that slowly slid down the battered neck of Lucemia before he slipped off the side and disappeared into a thick bank of cloud.

Rei was caught and supported by her revived student before the knife-fighter could follow after Irwin, and was gently lowered down into a wobbly sitting position by an anxious Lisa. Relief warred with concern at the sight of the heavy blistering and burns that spread across every inch of bared skin, with the beautiful golden hair in hardly better shape.

But Rei wasn't done yet. Nearly cross-eyed with exhaustion, there was still some part of her that was boiling with anger and hurt that had nothing to do with physical pain. Rei rummaged around in her head and found the part of her that could sense Mana and wore the bonds she had with those around her.

That part was hopping up and down and shouting that this was wrong, Mana wasn't supposed to be bent like this, it needed to be _fixed_! In no mood to hear about it, Rei gave that part of her free reign, if it would only _shut up_.

Lisa yelped as Mana burst out from her teacher in a widening ring, golden light sinking into the battered hide of Lucemia with a bright jangle of music not unlike the sound of Rei's hair-ornaments. Rei went limp in her grasp at the same time the Wyrm's body gave a sickening lurch and dropped several yards. A moment later it did it again.

Lisa let out a scream as the 'floor' dropped completely out from beneath them, plummeting her unconscious teacher and herself into freefall as the glossy scales below went chalk-white and collapsed to the earth faster than the two females could fall.

And then the world was rainbow colors and softness as they landed with a quiet 'thud' on a familiar surface. The Cancun Bird let out a pleased squawk over her catch and swung immediately back for Gato as Lisa scrambled into a sitting position and pulled the still-out Rei close to her on their rescuer's feathered back. The other hand began digging for the precious vials that Rei had insisted be carried by the Elf-girl alone.

"'I'll be fine,'" Lisa muttered to herself as her fingers found the first of the clay vials tucked safely away in her pack. "'You're going to need these more.' As IF!!"

———

Lisa had barely gotten her teacher conscious again by the time the Bird settled into her nest with a happy burble of music and tucked glossy beak against feathery chest. The Elf-girl carefully helped Rei down by way of the vines that grew around and in the nest, none too certain that the knife-fighter was going to stay upright despite most of the burns being healed. That weird burst of Mana had taken almost as much strength from the sprite woman as the fight had, leaving Rei extremely wobbly on her feet.

Daena came out from the cave path as two sets of feet reached solid ground at last, bleary green eyes meeting dazed, mourning ones as the cat-girl took a deep breath and spread her hands. "Rei...Matilda just passed away. Her body..." Daena's voice was bemused and awed and grieving all at once. "...It dissolved away like mist..."

Rei closed her eyes and leaned heavily on Lisa's shoulder, letting that sink in. "I'm sorry for your loss," came her reply. "She will be missed."

That seemed to snap Daena out of the haze of mourning and got her focused on the pair fully for the first time in minutes. With a soft oath the cat-girl hurried forward and lent her own shoulder, helping Lisa half-carry the knife-fighter down the path towards the Temple.

———

Nearly half a day's travel away a cluster of Faeries had gathered in their court within Rosiotti's Jungle. As one they opened their eyes and shared disturbed looks amongst each other. "Our Lord Irwin's presence has vanished..." one murmured.

"Did he die?" another piped up anxiously.

A tiny fist clenched as a third spoke. "He was supposed to be the one to annihilate the humans..."

A fourth drifted over to the third. "Do you think so? Maybe we are the ones going extinct."

"Us?" echoed the third in astonishment.

The fourth nodded. "That is right. The memories of war made us forget who we really are."

"You traitor!" spat the original speaker, lunging for the other Faerie with eyes glittering in rage. "Take that back!" it yelled, pursuing its opponent as the other fled squeaking.

———

Elsewhere again, a blue-striped Shadole popped into the open space before Olbohn's desk in Underworld and propped stubby limbs against the vague suggestion of its waist. "Hey, mister big shot!" it declared in greeting, "There are spirits wandering around without permission! Tell me what to do!"

Without even looking up from his paperwork, the Wisdom replied, "Let them wander. They're not causing any trouble."

The Shadole made a gesture that was remarkably like a human, yanking at hair that it didn't have as it yelled, "Aaaaargh! You don't care about a thing, do you!?"

The wrinkled, stooped form of Matilda materialized in front of the Shadole, clasping her hands meekly before her as she quavered, "Sir Olbohn?"

"Hey, who the heck are you!?" squawked the Shadole as Olbohn opened his mouth to speak. "Have you received the Baptism of Flame?"

Olbohn let a small smile grace his lips as he dipped his head in brief greeting. "Welcome, Matilda. Have you decided to go with Selva's idea?"

Matilda's returning smile was warm and full of hope. "It will be my pleasure, sir."

"Don't ignore me!!!" wailed the Shadole, disappearing with a pop of displaced air.

Olbohn continued to do just that as he let his eyes wander over the old woman before him. "Well, Matilda, you don't need to look so ancient anymore," he told her with a hint of amused chiding in his voice. "Irwin will be hurt to see you that way, since he has always regretted what he did in the past."

"Then I suppose I will change my appearance," agreed the woman as she went from ochre-clad old woman to the fresh-faced red-head in green robes that Rei had once caught glimpses of in the Ulkan Mines. "Is Irwin here, too?" the restored Matilda asked eagerly.

"He is down on the lower levels. Should I take you there?"

Matilda shook her head, surprised by how much she'd missed the feeling of her hair sliding against her neck. "No, I can do that." For a moment, her courage nearly failed her at the thought of meeting him again like this, before she murmured Irwin's name as a talisman and vanished.

Olbohn went back to his papers with the knowledge that things were probably going to be a bit livelier around here again.

———

Irwin scowled at the annoying creatures that had put themselves firmly between him and the doors here in this chamber filled with walls of tiny stalagmites and cracked stone faces. "Hey, newly-dead!!" one cackled, "This is the Underworld!"

"There are rules that you have to follow here!!" the second declared before it let out a sharp whistle. Four more creatures popped out of thin air and began to crowd the demon-blooded male towards the back wall.

"Irwin!" Matilda cried, stepping out from the air and leveling an impressive glare at the creatures. "Go away, Shadoles," she commanded, in a voice Irwin had thought to never hear from her.

The effect was immediate, but hardly positive. The...Shadoles...only crowded closer in menace. "Go away!?" one repeated in disbelief. "Did you say that!?"

"Geez, girl! Who are you to tell us where to go?" laughed another.

Matilda drew herself up ramrod straight and replied in a voice like polished steel, "I am the universe. Away from me, Shadoles." The creatures scattered, leaving Irwin alone with a person he didn't know what to do with, wearing a face that he hadn't seen in ten years.

"What happened?" he asked after a few moments, breaking the silence.

"That was an easy Spell of Truth," replied the ghost of his past with a negligent shrug, tucking her hands behind her back and smiling up at him. "How does it feel to be dead, Irwin?"

"I'm more surprised about your powers, not my death," he told her bluntly.

Matilda never lost a beat as she said, "Well, actually, it is the power of the universe, not my own. Our souls can create anything we desire in a flash."

Irwin looked down at his broad hand, the flesh unmarked by the battle that had cost him his life. He had the irrational urge to tuck one of those thin red braids behind a delicate curve of ear, and it was frustrating him. "Just like a god?" he asked instead, raising his gaze back to the young woman standing before him.

"You can do it too," he was informed seriously. "All you need to do is wish for it."

He let out a huff of scornful laughter. "I'm a demon. All I desire is to destroy."

Matilda stamped her foot in a gesture he remembered from old. "But that is not correct! You created ME." She jabbed a thumb at her chest and continued with, "People around me molded me into a person I wasn't, but by meeting you, I was able to begin creating the person I really should be."

His traitorous hand reached out towards the air in front of her face, as though to carry out that frustrating, confusing desire about the braid. "Matilda..." he sighed. "Your presence was always a thorn in my heart. If I could, I would wish to be born as a demon again, to bring chaos to this world..." His hand turned, cupped air for a brief moment before it dropped back to his side. "I need to free myself from a spell named Matilda..."

She gazed up at him with all of the love and longing that they had never been able to act upon. "Your soul can make anything you wish come true. I am here not only because I wished for it, but so did you. And this unfair world you wished to destroy is about to end. Everything is created through us."

"Matilda..." he sighed again, hand reaching out again in spite of his attempt to keep it by his side where it belonged. "I will not embrace you, for your frail body would break if I did."

"Do not worry," Matilda told him gently, taking one step forward. "We are no longer encaged in our earthly bodies."

For a long moment, Irwin only looked at her, his eyes betraying his warring halves. And then he vanished, leaving Matilda alone in the room.

She walked a little farther in, sorrow rising up in her throat as she confirmed that he really was gone. With a little sob she dropped to her knees, bowing her head as she began to cry. She felt Selva materialize from somewhere, but when he took a breath to speak she only shook her head and buried her face in her hands.

She accepted that things were changing and would continue to change. But for now, those changes ached like fresh wounds that had not yet had a chance to heal. And for a brief moment, Matilda wondered if they ever would.

———

Meh. Nothing to say.


	31. Catchin' Lilipeas, Niccolo 3, 4, Quits

Yo! I am indeed alive! I have been on a minor writing kick trying to get the last of the major arcs finished, and I can proudly say that yes, they are done. And there are, at best, four chapters beyond Teardrop Crystal. I'm not sure whether to throw confetti or just plain out fall over. And since I've been gone so long, I'm going to post several chapters over the next few days. Most of them are going to be a bit on the short side, but trust me, Teardrop Crystal is going to make up for it.

**aRLeg0dDesS:** Indeed, Matilda does become a Wisdom. Though I never thought they ended up separated in the end. Just that Irwin hasn't gotten it through his thick skull that he can love Matilda freely now that they're dead. (Is dead a word one can use on a Wisdom? Quasi-dead? What kind of state do they actually exist in?) I always saw the end as Irwin running off to mope and sulk and eventually get his fuzzy head out of his equally-fuzzy rump. I'm sorry to hear you've been depressed. Hopefully these chapters will cheer you up!

**Airess Byrd:** _—snorkels through pool of reviews—_ Gods above and below, the squawk I let out when I saw that I had over thirty emails sitting in my inbox! Then, of course, I found out that most of them were _reviews_ and they were all left by one person. I haven't been bowled over like that in a very long time. Thank you!! (And yes, I did read every. Single. One. XD )

**Reiko x 3:** _—waves—_

**FM:** Thanks for stopping by! Yes, if you're stubborn enough to get the required quests out of the way, you can take Elazul with you on every event involving Sandra and the Jumi. However, for the most part I'm too lazy to go through _quite_ that much effort. But...special event? Shrine? Do you mean the part where he jumps you outside of Domina Church and demands to go with you?

2) The Flowers are _easy_ once you know the pattern. Chop off the spell-caster head, let it blow itself up while you stay out of reach from the biting head, then chop that one off and mash. Repeat until dead. :)

**hUeS -of- h a z e l:** Yes. The boys are complete and total idiots. I agree most wholeheartedly on that. As for Escad, he might show up for a few minutes of screen time, but his main role is pretty much done.

**clover bookcat:** _—blushes—_ Well! Thank you very much and hello! Yes, search engines are wonderful, and I use YouTube myself. I use it and a site called Etansel for the Jumi chapters or when I've forgotten details. Alright, everybody! After a long delay, here we go!

———

Rei took a deep, welcome breath of fresh growth and warm air as she shed her winter cloak and stuffed it in between the straps of her brand-new pack. She'd just come from Norn Peaks to seek out Akravator on her own terms, and had found him perched on the same spire of rock where she and a misguided dragoon had fought him months ago. Looking back at those times, it felt to Rei like she was looking at someone else's life, and at something that happened in the ages past.

Despite her reservations, Akravator had welcomed her warmly and without any surprise whatsoever, cheerfully suggesting a sparring match between them. Given that she'd had a hand in his death—however temporary it had turned out to be—Rei had felt obligated to accept, and had shown him just how much stronger she had grown since the last time they'd fought against each other.

They had talked afterwards, he couched upon the stones, she leaning against the polished warmth of his chest scales with his head curved around to look at her and his voice thrumming through her bones. Hours had passed them by as they'd wandered from topic to topic, never settling on one for very long. Somewhere between a discussion on the uses of runes and an argument on the practicality of philosophy, Rei's apology had slipped out with a feeling of lancing an old, souring wound. Akravator had just as easily acknowledged it, accepted it, and changed the topic to the weather without missing a single beat.

She had gone to visit Jajara as well before that, but he had either been out somewhere or he had simply refused to answer the calls echoing around the vast chamber where she and Larc had brought him low. Nor was there any sign of Deathbringer, though quite frankly Rei doubted that the Bone Dragon would allow himself to be without his dragoon for very long. Still, at least Jajara's restored Mana Stone welcomed her happily enough. She still wasn't able to get close enough to touch one without the world going funny, but the purity of them sang to that part of her soul that had people's names written on it.

Now she was here to check in with Sierra and Vadise since she hadn't seen or talked to either of them since the day the golden-haired sprite had pried Larc out of Olbohn's irritated grasp.

Or perhaps she would take a brief side excursion, she amended as her eyes fell upon three familiar figures: a small manikin dressed all in blue, a gangly rabbit-man in running clothes, and a bulking human dressed in heavy furs.

"Awight, wisten up!" Sotherbee was piping just as Rei came within earshot. "Today is a vewy special day."

Skippy dropped into a crouch to start stretching his legs, and grinned mockingly at the tiny fellow. "So, Mr. Fuddy-duddy, what should we catch today, huh?"

"I am not Mr. Fuddy-duddy!" he was scolded for what had to be the dozenth time or more. "My name is Sotherbee! And I would wike you two to catch Wiwipeas! Wiwipeas are most ware, and the bourgeois madam is cwazy for them."

Hamson snuffled a bit, scratched at his head beneath his fur hat, and asked, "Duh, what are these Lilipeas like...?"

"They're small, pink, and wound. There's a pea-eater bird's nest on their heads."

Skippy blinked at the manikin. "So like, what the heck is that, huh?"

"The Mana Goddess makes some stwange things. She must have a sense of humor," Sotherbee said with a shrug.

"Dud, how much are you going t' pay fo' them, huh?" came from Hamson.

"Today I shall purchase them for a thousand Wucre each."

Rei felt amusement crinkle at her eyes when the big lug started counting out laboriously on his fingers. "So that means...four, uh...five and thirty...Duh, how many d'we have t' catch t' repay our debt...uh...?"

Sotherbee let out a put-upon sigh. "Just hand over as many as you can get. Then, dundahdunDUN! The one who bwings in the most will be be an executive of the Kwistie Gwoup."

"The Goddess sure does make some annoying creatures," Skippy commented before he bolted off along the right-hand path. Hamson tried to go over the description that Sotherbee had given, and predictably got it thoroughly mixed up. Sotherbee sighed again and suggested that Hamson should perhaps go collect some pebbles or something, which promptly set the large human off. His ego smarting from the jab at his intelligence (or, if you asked Skippy, the lack thereof), Hamson clattered off down the left-hand path with his face set into a deep scowl.

"Hello, Mr. Sotherbee," Rei said, coming up beside the adorable manikin.

He brightened, obviously pleased to see someone competent at last. "Hewwo, Miss Wei! How are you?"

"Pretty good, these days. And you?"

Sotherbee shrugged. "It depends on where Skippy and Hamson are. But where is your appwentice?"

"Bud?" Rei laughed. "I asked if he wanted to come with me today, but it's fairly deep winter back home. He poked his nose out the front door, saw that the snow was still there, and told me to ask again when the rest of the world was inhabitable. Last I saw him, he, his sister, and every pet monster of ours that could fit through the front door were doing very good impressions of pastries baking in front of the hearth." And Fuzzbucket was tucked up contentedly in the barn with plenty of heat-spelled stones to go along with his shaggy winter coat. "I came by to see a couple of friends, but it sounds like your crew might need a hand."

"You should search for Wiwipeas, too!" Sotherbee encouraged her. "You'll get a thousand Wucre each!" And he truly did want someone he could trust to do the job actually on it.

The knife-fighter smiled. "I'll see what I can do. I'll meet you back here in a couple of hours?" Sotherbee nodded enthusiastically and Rei loped off in the same direction that Skippy had run, hair-pipes chiming a merry tune.

———

She found Skippy in a clearing a few twists and turns later, scrambling after a fleeing Lilipea that was leading him in quite a frantic chase. Rei scooted a bit closer, judged her moment, and stuck her foot out just as the Lilipea ran past.

Skippy promptly found out how White Forest loam tasted as he measured his length on the ground. The Lilipea ran off with a relieved squeak, vanishing into the underbrush before Rei could say 'hopscotch'. Which left the knife-fighter with an irate rabbit-man levering himself up with a glare. "You pest!! Get outta my way!"

Rei put on her best innocent expression that Elazul would never have bought in a million years. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be. But where were you going?"

"After that stupid Lili—" Skippy looked around and swore under his breath as he started dusting himself off. "Great. It got away. I can't believe I was outrun by that little..."

Rei kept her pleasure firmly behind her mask and began heading off down another path. "I'm sure you can catch up again," she told him. "In the meantime, I'll go see if Hamson is doing any better."

"THAT lump!? Ha!" Outraged by the very thought, Skippy took off, breezing past Rei and disappearing around a corner. Rei let out a quiet chuckle and kept wandering in whatever direction her feet chose to take her.

———

Somewhere towards the middle of the Forest (Rei wasn't really sure, she'd pretty much been picking directions at random since she wasn't trying to follow the Mana patterns) the knife-fighter found someone she would never have expected to see here. He was tall, taller than her by several inches, slender, and endearingly bird-like with feathered arms and a kind, oval face. "Reverend Nouvelle!" Rei greeted the man with pleasure, trotting up to him with a smile. "What a wonderful surprise! I was wondering where you'd gone when I found Domina Church empty. What are you doing here?"

The Mana priest for the village of Domina closed the large book he'd been studying and returned her smile with equal warmth. "Rei. This is indeed a pleasure. I have found the legendary village of the Lilipeas..." He turned, looking over his shoulder at the path behind him firmly blocked by stacks of thorny bushes, "But they will not let me in. I think there is a Lilipea who is in trouble in the forest. How about helping them?"

He said the last with the air of someone telling a familiar joke, making Rei laugh as she tucked her hands behind her and rocked on her heels. "I'm already doing just that. There are a couple of people from Geo looking for Lilipeas for Kristie, but I wouldn't worry too much. They're nice, but pretty hopeless."

"Then I shall no doubt see you again very soon," the Reverend told her, winning another laugh as she began trotting down the path she'd been following in the first place. She half-turned to wave at him before she turned a corner and resumed her search for Hamson.

———

Along the way to Hamson, Rei found a red barrel sitting out in the middle of a clearing, shaking gently from the motion of its contents. Rei lifted the lid and grinned, reaching in and fishing out a rather startled Lilipea. "Well, what do you know?" chuckled the knife-fighter as she set the pink ball down on the soft loam. "Looks like one of them, at least, isn't as incompetent as they act. You head on home, okay, little guy?"

"Pwa," thanked the Lilipea, and ran off. Rei put a fist through the barrel to make sure it couldn't be used again and trotted off once more. She whistled as she went, feeling inordinately cheerful considering the last couple of weeks. Maybe it was the warm air after winter's bite, or just being out of the house and doing some good that didn't involve saving the entire continent or world.

Maybe it had something to do with the newly-forged Ishe platinum knives sitting in brand-new sheathes on her hips, replacements for the ones she'd lost during the battle on Lucemia.

Or maybe it was the way that the Mana here in the White Forest sang so cheerfully in the back of her head to senses that were more acute than ever. Whatever it was, Rei was perfectly content to let her mood be buoyed from the grump-and-gloom she'd been stuck in lately.

The sight of Hamson clattering after a Lilipea just made her smile even more. The little construct was barely a fifth of his height and was running circles around the clumsy human, hardly looking concerned at all. It zigged a left and disappeared into the brush with a wry 'pwa' when Rei accidentally-on-purpose got between it and Hamson.

"Duh...Hey, you!! Get outta my way!!" groused Hamson, before he blinked and pointed an accusing finger at the sprite. "He got away...All 'cus of you!"

"Oops," was all the apology offered, before Rei darted off in the same direction as the Lilipea with a mischievous giggle. Hamson stood there blinking for a few long moments, caught by the gleam of emerald eyes half-veiled by dusty-gold hair, before he shook himself and went grumbling back to his task.

———

Rei headed back to the Lilipea village amongst laughter and the distinct feeling of someone watching her with amusement. She took one last turn—and stopped, discovering Hamson and Skippie had already beaten her there and were standing where the Reverend had been only a short time before. She ducked behind a worn statue of the Mana Goddess before they could spot her and leaned back against the warm golden stone to shamelessly eavesdrop.

"This is it," she heard Skippie say. "I bet the Lilipea village is up ahead. Get the whole bunch, 'n I'll be an exec before you know it." There was a long pause and the sound of feet twisting on the dirt. "But you know what? I'm gonna let you have 'em."

Another long pause, and then Hamson sighed. "We ain't alike, but we're alike. It don't matter t' me no more."

Rei peeked around the statue to find Skippie looking curiously at his co-worker. "What should we do now, Hamson?"

The human shrugged and flexed his arms and shoulders. "Pirates...Diggers...Anything...I'm gonna start over t' create my own Legend of Hamson!"

Grinning, the rabbit-man declared, "Alright! That's awesome! So, I'm gonna have my own Legend of Skippie!"

"Momma, I'm sorry," Hamson said to the air. "I'm gonna give it a fresh start."

"We're running away from debt. They might track us down..." Skippie gave his partner a wicked grin, "And I don't wanna run with a slow-poke like you!"

Hamson snorted. "How can I hang around a guy with toothpicks fo' arms!?"

Rei fell back against the statue with both hands clapped over her mouth to stifle her laughter, barely hearing Skippie say, "This might be it, Hamson!"

"This is it! Skippie!" Hamson replied, and then there was the sound of running footsteps.

Rei peeked around the statue again and found the path empty. She waited a few more seconds, then plunked down on the ground and burst into gales of laughter. _Honestly,_ she thought to herself as she leaned back against the statue to let herself grow breathless, _what have I done to be surrounded by dramatists? _Larc and his sister had been bad enough, Rachel and that mess with her parents even worse, and the four from the Temple enough to drive her crazy. Skippie and Hamson just sounded like actors from a bad play trying to make fun of a drama.

Wiping away tears, Rei got back up and headed up the small path lined with moss and stones and the occasional stray thorn. If nothing else, she'd have a wonderful story to tell Lil' Cactus tonight when she got home.

And it wasn't over yet, Rei discovered a short time later. The Lilipea village consisted of overly-large mushrooms with homes built into them, and what seemed like every Lilipea from all over Fa'Diel milling about the tiny village square. Reverend Nouvelle was standing beneath a particularly tall mushroom-cottage with his nose firmly stuck back into his book.

"Reverend?"

"I always thought the Lilipeas were only a legend," came the distracted response with the Reverend's gaze never leaving the pages of his book as he carefully leafed through it. "Mephianse researched them, but he was the only one to do so. It is said that they are descendants to Annuella's dolls. With clay and thread they crafted more of their own kind. I can speak a little Lilipean, from all my years studying them."

There was no sign of Hamson or Skippie, though Rei had seen their footprints come this way. So Rei did what she had always loved to do. She talked to people. Crouching down, she would introduce herself to a Lilipea and listen intently to each 'pwa' she was given in reply. One of them sounded like the one she'd fished out of the barrel; that one patted her on the knee and pointed to the largest Lilipea she had ever seen sitting in regal fashion to one side. The Lilipea chieftain—or leader, whatever they chose to call the one in charge—had a nest just like the others on its head, but instead of three little blue eggs inside, it had a full-grown pea-eater bird sitting in it.

Rei crouched down and offered an experimental 'pwa' to it, hoping she'd gotten the inflection right for a 'hello'. It considered her gravely for a moment, echoed by its bird, before it offered its own 'pwa' of greeting. It didn't sound annoyed or scornful of her attempt; rather, it sounded like it was repeating it with a slightly different pitch.

Rei tried again, following the new pitch, and was rewarded with a smile from the elder and an approving nod from the bird. "Pwa," said the big Lilipea.

"Ah, yes," came from directly behind her, making Rei squeak and plunk back onto her rump. She craned her head back and found Reverend Nouvelle standing above her with gentle amusement twinkling in his eyes. "It seems that this one is the village elder."

"Pwa."

The Reverend moved his gaze to the Lilipea elder, concentration wrinkling his hairless forehead. "Ah, yes...What? On the mountain to the north?" The pea-eater bird shook its head. "Near the lake?" Another headshake. "Somewhere in the forest?" A pause, and then the bird nodded.

"Pwa."

"The Fountain of youth...?" A headshake from the bird. "Something wonderful...?" Another headshake. "A terrible monster...?" Reverend Nouvelle asked, sounding rather dismayed. The bird considered that a moment, then nodded. "There is a terrible monster, so..."

"Pwa."

"Stay away...?" _No._ "Why not have a look...?"_ No._ "Go kill it...?" The bird nodded. "Oh!!" Nouvelle turned to Rei, who was sitting with her chin propped in one hand, having seen where this was going several headshakes back. Sounding rather sheepish, the Reverend told her, "He says there is a monster in the forest and he wants you to kill it."

"Pwa."

"He says he will guide you," translated the priest, pausing at another 'pwa' from the elder. "A great reward...?" A headshake. Turning back to face the elder fully, Reverend Nouvelle asked, "You understand us, do you not?"

Rei broke down into giggles when the bird shook its head 'no'.

———

She wasn't laughing when the Lilipea elder brought her to a tiny clearing in the northeastern corner of the forest. And if the elder hadn't shown her, she'd never have noticed the tiny footpath leading into it. "In there?" the knife-fighter asked, jerking a thumb towards the broken place in the underbrush.

"Pwa," said the elder, with a nod from its bird.

"Okay. Tell the Reverend I'll see him soon, would you?" And without waiting for a response, she plunged through the space and into the clearing beyond. Her new knives were out and gleaming brightly even before a familiar kind of hum reached her ears and a giant Mantis Ant came buzzing down into the clearing.

Rei blinked. This was the Lilipeas' 'terrible monster'? Oh, well. It would be exercise, anyway. Rei got down to work.

———

"Pwa."

"The elder is very thankful for all that you have done," translated the Reverend. They were all back in the Lilipea village with the elder once more in its place of honor. Rei had caught up to the elderly construct before it had gotten halfway back and had walked it the rest of the way here. Truthfully, she had a vague wish that the Ant had been more of a challenge and a better understanding of why Xan always hunted out the stronger monsters.

"It wasn't any problem, really," she assured the elder with a smile and a shrug. "I've fought Mantis Ants and a lot of creatures like them before. You just have to know how to dodge."

"Pwa."

"The village still wishes to reward you," Reverend Nouvelle said, as a smaller Lilipea stepped out from behind the elder and held up a piece of glittery stone. It was about the size of Rei's doubled fist and a pale silvery color. Crouching down, Rei thanked the little being and put her hands under it, nearly overbalancing when the weight of it came to fully rest in her grasp.

_Raw Ishe platinum?_ Rei thought in amazement, recognizing the silvery color at last. She had never seen it in ore form before. She hadn't thought you could _get_ it in ore form on this side of the Eastern Sea. Rei thanked the elder and the villagers profusely and was offered a chance to stay as long as she liked, as did the Reverend. She demurred, remembering at last that she had originally come to say hello to Vadise and Sierra and that Sotherbee was probably still waiting by the entrance to the forest.

So she bid goodbye to the Lilipeas and headed south along the paths, following the gentle tug of a happy, healthy Mana Stone to the lair of a white dragon and her headstrong dragoon. She visited for a while, catching up on news and sharing gossip and tea, then turned her steps towards the entrance.

It was coming up onto evening when Rei got back to the entrance, with a bemused Sotherbee still standing where she'd left him. She had to stomp down hard on her laughter when he mused aloud, "They must be wooking awound for evewy wast Wiwipea..."

"That must be it," she agreed. "I certainly couldn't find any, so they must have collected most of them already. But why don't you start heading back to the Palace? There's no point in waiting here all night if they're going to be stubborn about this."

Sotherbee was reluctant, but agreed. The two parted company shortly after, and Rei returned home with a fun story and a pack weighed down by platinum ore.

———

"So what do you think, Lil' Cactus? People are silly, aren't they?"

"Pwa."

———

'_Psychokinetic Flowerlings are highly adverse to being chased with the intent to capture and display. Or being chased in general, if you ask this author's opinion. Moreover, the disappearance of such from the Mindas Ruins affects the other Flowerlings who act as the keys to the various gates. (See 'Maps and Terrains' for the adjusted routes leading to and from the Tower of Wind.) Passage to the original ruins once occupied by Count Dovula has been rendered all but impossible.'_

Rei set her current book aside and picked up another one, all the while telling Lil' Cactus about today's numerous adventures with the peddler Niccolo. She dipped the nib of her wooden pen into the ink next to her and flipped to an open page to scribe neatly, _'The Blessed Elixir is a substance relied heavily upon by the nuns of Gato Grottoes. When drunk in sufficient quantities it has alcoholic properties for rabbit-folk—or at least, such was observed with a traveling peddler called Niccolo.'_

She paused and considered for a moment before adding, _'The main ingredients consist of Gato's fresh air and the water from a particular oasis in Duma Desert. (See 'Interactions with Hidden Races', Chapter Twelve, for more on the oasis itself and its significance to the current author.) To acquire a pure enough sample, one must first acquire a 'barrel in your soul' by speaking to a master brewer. (See also 'Mythologies of Fa'Diel' regarding the mythos surrounding the evaporation of the alcohol in aging casks and the origins of the Lumina tavern name 'Mischievous Spirits'.)_

The knife-fighter laid aside 'Traditions of Gato' to write in one titled 'People of Fa'Diel, circa 923 AB' and grinned, remembering not only that moment on the Paths of Asceticism when she finally got an excuse to thump a blitzed Niccolo, but the incidents shortly after that when she'd bumped into him again in Geo. _'Comments about the tricks employed by the dishonest Niccolo have already been made—including this author's opinion on the rabbit's tail being the true hint of his actual nature—and have reached new heights. By choosing a moment in which Watts was fully occupied with his work, Niccolo was allegedly able to place 30,000 Lucre-worth of Wendel silver amongst the blacksmith's materials. After a brief visit with Roger of the Diggers, Niccolo dragged this author back to discover Watts had already gone through the alleged silver, for which the rabbit demanded immediate payment in the form of Lucre or finished goods. (See the pages for Watts for conclusion.)'_

Flipping to a different page, Rei chuckled and wrote, _'Watts, finding himself in debt to Niccolo, attempted one of his infamous miracles by demanding that we present him with some Gator Skin so that he could craft a wallet to replace the one he'd lost prior to our visit. It has been previously noted that Watts shows himself to be distinctly incapable of thinking things through logically. It is the observation of this author that Watts was intending to copy his lost wallet, believing that the Lucre it had contained would appear in his fresh-sewn copy. Naturally the attempt failed, thus putting Watts further into debt when the cost of the leather was added to his bill. Niccolo then claimed payment in finished goods and left, leaving Watts to realize his own folly once again.'_

She flipped to a third set of pages and made a quick note. _'When encouraged, Roger of the Diggers proves himself to be an aspiring laureate in the realms of poetry. However, after granting a performance, he becomes incredibly shy and insists that you do not allow him do repeat it.'_

Rei set that book aside to slide a book simply labeled 'Herbology' into its place. Dipping her pen again, she let a wry smile twist her mouth into a curve as the fingers of her free hand gently twisted the stem of an angular leaf that had been sitting on the table. _'The herb known as the yambalooriben leaf can be found in the nest of Gato Grottoes' Cancun Bird. (See drawing for flora identification, left.) Somewhat perilous to obtain, it can be used to cure certain illnesses in basilisks and may possibly act as a booster to potions.'_ It had also cost Kristie the Palace of the Arts in Geo, thanks to the fact that she'd dealt with Niccolo for it. But that wasn't something that Rei was going to put into the 'Herbology' book. She noted it down with the rest of her observations on the overweight peddler and in a fresh paragraph on Kristie's page.

Bud, who had come up when she'd been busy sorting through the stack of books for the one she needed, piped up, "So how'd he manage that, Master Rei?"

Rei grinned, not minding that he'd been listening. "The idiot rabbit caught himself a case of amnesia the first time he went to get a leaf by falling off the nest and getting washed out to the crescent beach in Polpota Harbor. It turns out that he's quite a nice person when he's had the greedy wits knocked out of him. It caught Kristie and Sotherbee off guard, so they didn't raise enough money by the time he came back with the last leaf—which he'd fallen off the nest _again_ to get, thereby regaining his memories."

"And his normal attitude, right?"

"Right. Since the agreement that they had was to pay either ten billion Lucre or give Niccolo the Palace, he got the Palace. Kristie's now the manager. And I think that Niccolo might finally retire."

Bud scowled, but brightened again for a moment. "Think if we pushed him off the nest again, he'd go back to being nice?"

Rei chuckled and reached over to ruffle his hair. "It's a pleasant thought, but I don't think it'd work the same way twice. Besides, I'd feel awfully guilty if we pushed him off and he broke his neck in the fall."

"I guess you're right, Master Rei..."

Lil' Cactus hummed for a moment in his pot and then chirped, "Niccolo!"

———

Next chapter will be up in a day or two, everybody.


	32. Diddle Had It!

**mina_seikol: **Hi, and welcome! The last arcs are coming up soon, promise!

**clover bookcat:** Sorry that was confusing, I guess I didn't draw enough attention to the part that explained that. Rei was talking to Lil' Cactus as she was writing and Bud came up when she was telling her pet spineball about Niccolo. I do love the little critters that Squaresoft put into this game. :)

Viola! As promised, another chapter. Don't know if I'll post another tomorrow since I'll have work (and possibly my hands on a friend's copy of SMTP 3 again) but there will be another one within a week. I'm clearing out the rest of the mini-quests before I post up Teardrop Crystal.

———

Rei strolled into Lumina, content in the very early hints of spring that were peeking out of melting snow and the hedges. Crocus shoots showed vibrant green on the banks of the roads, while the hawthorns' branches were covered in leaf-buds. And even though the air still held a definite nip, Rei knew that the seasons had definitely changed and spring would soon be along to sweep the rest of winter's snow into the earth for the new grasses.

In the meantime, she had come to check in on Monique to see how her lamp shop was doing. Unfortunately the Siren wasn't in—all she found was Gilbert, who was standing mournfully at the counter with his human half resting on folded arms. He sighed, wondering out loud if his lovely Monique was avoiding him.

Rei snorted. "Gilbert, you silly minstrel, have you been giving her any breathing space since you got back?"

"Of course! I don't try to go to the bathroom with her or anything, after all," sighed the lovelorn centaur. "I only try to help make lamps, and sing her songs, and bring her treats from the market..."

She couldn't help it; Rei laughed, playfully tugging on the brim of his floppy hat as she tilted her head to smile at him. "You truly are silly, but I can see why Monique likes you so much now. Whenever she comes back, try holding back a bit on your affections, okay? Don't try to spend almost every hour of every day with her. Instead of bringing her lots of presents, try getting her a few thoughtful things that you know she'll like, rather than what you think she'll like. Okay?"

Gilbert sighed again but brightened a little. He was obviously thinking about how to put Rei's advice to work even as the knife-fighter left. Since Monique wasn't home, she would drop by the market square and get a warm drink.

The square was crowded with Dudbears like it always was these days, thanks to the performances of Capella and Diddle. "Hi, boys!" she greeted them, smiling and waving. Capella grinned back and did an extra flourish with his juggling balls in reply, but Diddle did something completely unexpected. He stopped playing music and left the square the same way that Rei had entered it, all without a word.

Rei blinked, twisting to look behind her, but Diddle had already disappeared around a corner. "Strange. I wonder what that was about. Capella, do you have any idea?"

Capella sighed. "Man! He's gone _again_! What's gotten into him this time?" For several long moments he, Rei, and the crowd of Dudbears stared towards the entrance road, then the little monkey shrugged and resumed juggling. "Oh, well! It's not my business!"

"Capella," Rei chided, frowning. "He's your best friend, isn't he? Aren't you going after him?"

"Nope! I don't care!" was the cheery answer.

Rei sighed and muttered 'gak' under her breath as she walked up the stairs to the bar. "Barman, do you have any hot chocolate or tea? I can't feel my nose," she complained cheerfully once she'd gotten within earshot of the puzzle-man, looking up at him through her lashes as she rubbed at the tip of her nose. He only laughed and produced a heavy mug that he filled with something steaming hot.

"Here. Try this, it'll put the fire back in your bones," he chuckled, holding it out.

"What is it?" she inquired, taking an experimental sniff and a sip. And promptly let out a happy noise not unlike a purr at the smell of fresh-baked bread and the warmth of a hearth-fire seeping out from her stomach.

Matching her contented smile with one of his own, the bartender replied, "Just something I sell about this time of year. Never had a name, never needed one. Just call it a 'heart-warmer'."

"It's goood," purred Rei, cradling the cup and going to take a seat at the edge of the balcony with some of the other Dudbears. She swung her legs back and forth like a child as she called down to Capella, "Are you _sure_ you don't want to go looking for Diddle?"

"Nope! I don't care!"

She let another sigh and went back to her drink. She passed the time between sips by practicing her Dudbear and watching Capella juggle. Afterwards she left the cup at the bar and went back towards the entrance of Lumina, intending on just heading back home. She'd just gotten to the signpost when she heard a familiar eerie giggle from somewhere behind her...

"Oh, no..." she breathed, clutching at her scarf as she turned to look behind her...at the empty square. Her eyes flickered rapidly, finding only the last Dudbear that she'd once sold a lamp to and a Sproutling wandering languidly around. She wasn't sure if she should feel relief at not spotting any Shadoles here just yet.

Instead, she went back one more time to talk to Capella. If he was going to be stubborn, she would just have to grab him by one of his monkey-sized ears and take him with her. Friends did not abandon friends. But instead of resisting, he was already at the edge of the market square with his juggling balls clutched in his hands and a look of worry on his face. "Oh, Diddle..." the performer complained to no one in particular, "Why does he do this to me all the time?" He caught sight of Rei and his shoulders slumped. "I know, I know. I'll go look for him."

"Well, we'd better look fast," Rei told him under her breath as he fell into place at her side, "because there are Shadoles running around somewhere, and I think they might be after...Diddle!" she cried as they reached the main square. The little musician was there—as were four Shadoles who wasted no time pouncing on him.

"Diddle!!" Capella shouted, running forward. The Shadoles giggled and waved their stubby arms. With a 'whoam' and a flicker of light Diddle was gone, leaving Capella to face-plant amongst the servants of Olbohn. With another round of eerie giggling they winked out of sight one-by-one.

"Damn!" Rei swore, thumping her fist against a wall. "Come on, Capella! Grab my hand and hang on!"

"What's going on!?" demanded the juggler as he obeyed. He let out a yelp as the world vanished around them to reform in the shape of a massive tombstone just in front of them. "Yikes!"

With a peal of high-pitched laughter another Shadole popped out of empty air in front of the stone monument. "Diddle's waiting!" it chirped, waving a stubby arm of its own. "Straight to the bottom of the Underworld with you!"

———

Rei groaned as she sat up, feeling a distinct wash of déjà vu as she looked around and found herself in a bubble of a cave with thorned walls decorated with wicked faces. "We're now at the bottom of the Underworld!" declared a piping voice from somewhere above her—she squinted a bit and tilted her head, finding the Shadole from the tombstone hovering above her. At least, she _thought_ it was the same one. Things were damn near impossible to tell apart when they were the same color.

Capella, of course, was nowhere to be seen. Instead, Pokiehl was standing a couple of feet away, wearing the gentle smile she had yet to see him without. "Hello, Pokiehl," she groaned as she levered herself back onto her feet and dusted herself off. "It's nice to see you again. And thank you for leaving me with my cloak," she added to the Shadole as an afterthought. It waved at her in reply, this time without any magic attached.

"Hello, Rei," Pokiehl greeted, and spread an arm to indicate the room they were standing in. "Welcome to the Underworld! They say the dead come here, but it's meant for souls who still cling to life. As long as you are able to feel happiness and sorrow, you must avoid the Shadoles. The Shadoles will try to drag you to the bottom of the Underworld."

"Nothing personal," quipped the tiny creature now reclining on air.

"If you can endure the sorrows of the dead, then this is just another warm cave. The earth is always warm. You may return to the world above if you wish," Pokiehl told her, a gleam in his eyes telling her that he'd heard all about her camping trip down here from his fellow Wisdom.

Rei shook her head and looked around her. "If it's all the same to you, Pokiehl, I have a little monkey and a stubborn tadpole sprite to go find. Someone needs to escort them back to the surface before a monster eats them."

"Then proceed and be careful," the Wisdom of Truth warned, stepping to one side. Rei nodded and walked out, finding herself in the same old corridors that she'd walked a long time ago when she'd sought out the imprisoned shade of a dragon. She looked around her one more time as she folded back the edges of her cloak and resettled her knives on her hips.

"Okay, boys and girls," she called to the echoing corridors. "Ready or not, here I come!"

———

Pokiehl smiled when she was abruptly dropped back into the lowest chamber once again, a scowl on her face and her hair rumpled from the unexpected passage. "Welcome back, Rei," the bard said warmly as he helped her to her feet. "Which Shadoles caught you?"

"The third set," she muttered. "First two were easy enough, but it's hard to avoid them when you can't see them."

He brushed the tips of his fingertips against one of her cheeks before tapping her gently on the nose. She wrinkled it at the tickling sensation as he told her, "Then perhaps one should not rely on their eyes, hmm?"

She opened her mouth to protest, closed it again, and blinked thoughtfully for a moment before her face cleared. With a nod and a thank you, she darted back out of the room and raced up the corridor, leaving Pokiehl and the first Shadole alone once again.

The aforementioned construct drifted over to the Wisdom and crossed its stubby arms. "No fair giving her hints," it scolded him. "People are supposed to stand or fall on their own down here."

Pokiehl tilted his head so that he could look at the Shadole out of one bright eye. "Do you really want her to remain down here?" he queried. "She will, you know. As long as it takes to reach the children and take them out of the Underworld. What do you suppose Olbohn would have to say if she was given another extended stay?"

_Gulp._ Going pale under its stripes, the Shadole drifted to the other side of the room and stayed there, muttering to itself. Pokiehl only smiled, and continued to wait.

———

Rei stood at the edge of the third landing, slightly breathless from the uphill climbing and avoiding of previous Shadoles. She had no desire to be pounced upon en masse by a pack of the candy-cane-pink ones, nor caught by the spiraling of a blue-striped gang. Nor this trick, but this was the one that had caught her last time.

The landing appeared empty, but Rei knew better. She'd seen the pulled down eyelids, the stuck-out tongues; had heard the eerie laughter as over a dozen Shadoles had vanished into thin air. But they hadn't left—they were hiding in pockets of folded air in the middle of the room, stretched out into two ranks.

"'Shouldn't rely on one's eyes', hmm?" she mused aloud to the air. Faint rustles met her words, but the Shadoles remained unseen. "Well, when someone gives you good advice, it's usually a good idea to take it." So with a deep breath, she let her eyes drift closed and loosened her hold on her Mana-senses.

It was something she hadn't dared to do since that day on Lucemia. Her abilities had grown since then, expanding almost faster than she could learn to control them. Without such a tight grasp, it was the day a crystal sword had unlocked the song of the world all over again and the melody would come rushing back.

This time, though, she only uncurled a mental finger of her metaphysical grip to let the darkness melt away into a soft blue radiance. The glow was faint, no stronger than two moons at crescent, showing her the room and all of the ripples where Mana collected. "What's she doing?" she heard faintly as she took another breath. Shadoles were constructs, but even they needed Mana to exist. Where the walls, ceiling, and floor were a thin wash of silvery blue, each and every Shadole was a candle in crystal, limning their bodies until even their stripes sparkled.

Except for two places where the lines were broken. Confidence mingled with surprised pleasure at this amazing new way of seeing things as Rei stepped forward. Here there was a place where the Mana rippled around a small upthrusting of rock just big enough to trip unwary feet. There the walls poured Mana down in thousands of trickles, forming a curving sheen as it flowed over the jags and carvings and reaching fingers of stone.

And here was her path, the inner light of the Shadoles' Mana burning torches to light the way with. A space between the Shadole closest to the left wall and his neighbor two places down, the person-sized band of safety between the two ranks, and the second opening against the right wall.

Free, she opened her eyes again and the world fell back into color. "Hey!" called one of the Shadoles when she walked towards the door. She paused and looked back to find it hovering somewhere in the middle of the second rank, nonexistent hands propped on chubby hips. "Hey, how did you do that!?"

Rei only smiled. "Ask Pokiehl." And then she padded through the door.

———

It was another room like the one she'd been in a little while ago, but instead of holding a Wisdom and a Shadole, it held instead a small monkey sprite and a tadpole sprite. "There you are!" Rei sighed in relief, walking up behind Diddle. He grinned up at her and beckoned to his best friend.

"Come on, Diddle! Let's go back to the sunny surface!"

But the small musician only crossed his arms over his chest straps and scowled. "No! Nothing is fun out there, anyway!" he retorted, his slow drawl at odds with the bitter unhappiness coating his words. "You're having fun, and people have fun watching you...But I don't!"

A blue-striped Shadole popped out of thin air between Diddle and the others, chortling as it told the tadpole sprite, "You're sounding like a good Shadole-to-be!" It made Rei clench her hands around the hilts of her knives, fully prepared to find out what really constituted the innards of an Underworld construct.

Capella in the meantime shot back, "I'm not always smilin' because I'm havin' fun!"

"Then why do you always have a smile on your face!?" Diddle demanded.

The juggler opened his mouth for a sharp reply, closed his mouth, and opened it again. "That's...that's for me to decide!" he stammered.

"Show business?" suggested Rei, keeping her eyes on the Shadole. Capella nodded quickly and pointed to her, echoing her suggestion with enthusiasm.

"You just say things without thinking about anything!" Diddle spat.

Shaking his head, the little monkey told his friend, "You got that one wrong, Diddle."

"Oh, stop!" the musician snapped at the other's back. "Why are you smiling again!?"

Turning back, Capella tucked his hands behind his head and kicked one foot out carelessly. "Well, it's kinda funny!" he said, winning himself a puzzled look from Rei and the Shadole and an irritated one from Diddle.

"Nothing's funny!" insisted Diddle. "There's nothing good about like. You get hurt, have fights, and there are too many good-byes. Watching your shows doesn't make anything better!" He paused, then added spitefully, "And I don't like it when people laugh when you juggle!"

Rei saw Capella wince as that barb slid home on the heels of another Shadole popping into the room. She eased herself a step or two closer to the juggler, figuring that she could at least shove him behind her if things got heated enough.

Capella sighed and let his shoulders droop. "I know. I understand it all, Diddle." When Diddle only stared at him in surprise, the juggler continued, turning to smile up at Rei. "This world is full of borin' and nasty things...But I still like livin' in this world."

Rei smiled back. "Me, too."

Without turning around, Capella called, "Come back up when I make the world a better place. So...take care until then. I'll be waitin' for you up there."

A third Shadole appeared, giggling madly as it informed the sprites, "You can't go back once we've taken you in! You'll become a Shadole, and never return to human form!" Which only made Rei wonder for the uncountable time what made everything categorize sprites as humans.

Diddle looked at the Shadoles around him, then looked at the still-turned back of his best friend. "Capella..." he faltered, and tried again. "...I won't turn into a Shadole. I will remain myself," he continued, confidence growing with every word, "so don't worry about me."

"Hee hee hee!" laughed the fourth Shadole as it pulled itself out of thin air. "Did you hear that!? He's not gonna turn into a Shadole!"

A fifth added his own laughter to the mix, forming so that Diddle was now completely surrounded by the servants of Olbohn. "Are we ever gonna have fun with him!"

That was when Capella turned back to his friend and held out one red-golved hand. "Come on, Diddle. I won't look down on ya. Even if you come after me now, I'll welcome you."

Diddle looked at him, then at that outstretched hand. His eyes traveled back to the sprite bending down to rest her weight on a hand above her knees. The other stretched out to welcome him as warmly as his best friend, with emerald eyes shining softly in the dim light of the room. "Come on, Diddle. The sunshine and the flowers are waiting for us."

The Shadoles all squawked in disbelief when Diddle stepped forward and started to play. The bright, jangling melody was totally out of place in this grim little cave, but it made both of the waiting sprites smile happily. Sharing a troubled look, the last Shadole to appear drifted over to float at Diddle's shoulder and spoke with a gentleness that Rei had never heard from one of their kind. "Hey, 'Diddle'...I'll let you know something," it said, barely audible over the melody. "All you need to do is run. If you make it up there, then you're free from us."

Encouraged, Diddle took a few more steps forward and was hugged by his relieved friend. The Shadole added, "If you don't make it, then the monster's gonna gobble you up." Putting the end of its stubby arm to its mouth, it managed a credible equivalent of a two-fingered whistle before finishing with regret, "Of course, no one has ever made it alive."

With that, the Shadoles disappeared as a group, leaving the three sprites alone in the room shaking under the weight of the approaching monster. Rei pinpointed the noise as coming from the hallway behind her and quickly hustled the two youngsters towards the door leading up to the surface. "Okay, boys, this is where I come in," she told them. "You two head for the surface and _don't stop for anything_, got it? I'll be up there soon, I promise."

"But—!" protested Capella.

"We—!" added Diddle. Rei only shook her head and pushed them out half a second before the door slammed shut between them. Unsheathing her knives, Rei turned to look behind her, fully expecting to see something large enough to make that forceful quaking—only to find the same kind of ape-mummy that she'd found in the corridor leading to Count Dovula's room.

She blinked. The ape-mummy blinked, then reared back to pound its chest and hoot. "You're kidding, right?" she asked no one in particular. She side-stepped the hand that grabbed at her before the stretched ligaments of the ape's arm snapped back. "No, I guess you're really not," she sighed, and ducked another grab. "I'm going to be washing the stink out for _days_..."

———

Rei took a deep breath of fresh air, perfectly happy to be once more out of the Underworld and back in the realm of the living. She was also satisfyingly tired after her work-out against the ape-mummy, which had proven to be more of a challenge than she had expected. Taking care for the bruises gained by grappled throws that had sent her flying more than once, she eased herself away from the massive tombstone and smiled down at the two boys sprawled on the grass at her feet. She blinked and looked around them, noticing that for the first time, the grass was actually _green_. And more than that, it was also starred with wildflowers the likes of which she'd never seen before.

_Is this what the entrance to the Underworld looked like before Drakonis took over?_ Rei thought to herself, realizing that she had never been to this place in the greening time of early spring, only in winter with Larc or in the drying time of early summer with Bud.

"Oh, look, Capella!" startled her out of her amazement, bringing her attention back to the two boys who had noticed her arrival at last. She smiled down at Diddle from where he lay next to his instrument, and was smiled at in return.

"Hey, welcome back!" greeted Capella, sprawled happily on the lawn less than a foot away. "Diddle almost went back to get you! He should have trusted you like I do!" They all shared a laugh at the image of Diddle charging into the fight and maybe bashing the monster over the head with his instrument.

When the laughter had faded, Rei had already stretched herself out on the wonderfully soft grass to enjoy the cool air that gently poked through the open spaces of her cloak. She hadn't noticed the color of the sky until Diddle suggested, "Hey, Capella, let's stay and watch the stars just a little longer."

_Stars!? _Rei's eyes flew open and she stared up at the midnight velvet of the sky spangled with chips of glitter. How had an entire day passed while she was in the Underworld!? _Salamander and Shade, the twins are going to _murder_ me!_

She was already starting to sit up when Capella's voice broke through her panic. "Okay. But just a little longer."

"How come?" Diddle asked, tilting his head back a bit to look at the top of his friend's bright red hat.

Rei was the only one who could see the tears trickling in slow relief down the sides of the juggler's face as he fought down a grin. "Because, I'd have to break the promise that I wouldn't smile, 'cause I'm so happy."

Diddle relaxed again, smiling up at the sky. "It's okay, you can smile. Stars spin as they fall, when you're trying to catch your breath."

Capella sat up, blinking at the tadpole sprite. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"It's a secret."

Shaking his head, Capella told his friend, "You are one strange guy," and laughed.

That reminded Rei, and she sat up to lean over Diddle in an effort to get his attention. He looked up at her, their shared gaze caught behind tumbles of dusty-gold hair turned silver in the starlight. "Hey, Diddle? Remember what you said down there, about too many goodbyes?" He nodded. She smiled, and reached down to gently poke his forehead with a fingertip. "You forgot something really important when you were saying that. Before all of those goodbyes, you have to remember that 'hello' came first."

———


	33. Cant Look Back, Nordic, Diddle Kidnapped

Happy Holidays, everybody! Some of you might be wondering about that chipper declaration of the next chapter being out 'next week'. Well...life happens. Specifically, attempting to coordinate and get started on working at two jobs happens. Plus holiday shifts that are long and virtually every day. Oy. But! Since it _is_ Christmas, I'm posting what I've got to make up for it. That's this chapter containing the rest of the side-quests, Fluorite, and Teardrop Crystal. I'm still working on the last chapter, and then there will be one, possibly two epilogue chapters. Why two? You'll see. :D

**erutan:** Wow! I have international reviewers! Awesome! And your English is perfectly understandable. n.n Thanks for reading!

**ARLegG0dDesS:** And now I'm dropping three chapters into your lap. _—smiles—_ Elazul pops up (sort of) next chapter. He'll also be sticking around until the end of the last chapter, at least. (I don't mind short reviews; I can't really throw any stones because I've been quite bad about writing them myself, lately. n.n!)

**Airess Byrd:** I pull long-nights and all-nighters when I find good fic a little more than is probably good for me. Why do the years between mid-teens and mid-twenties make such a difference in your ability to be alert on long cat-naps? Hope you can catch up soon after this, and that your holidays go well!

**Jelem:** _—bows—_

**Reiko x 3:** I decided that a long time ago, though there is an advantage to taking Pearl instead of Elazul. I'll be putting that into the AN for Teardrop Crystal. As for when you're feeling computer-deprived, should another such horrible event occur (and I know how that goes, been there, done that. _—shudders—_) try visiting your local library if you have one. Free 'net access, if somewhat limited.

Well folks, on with the show!

———

A few days later, Rei was sincerely thankful that she hadn't lost her cloak in all that up-and-down and the in-and-out mess with the Underworld as she stood on the snowy expanses of the aptly named Fieg Snowfields. While winter was almost past in the rest of the continent, here winter was Queen and she held the lands in a permanent embrace. An extremely cold, somewhat windy embrace that managed to find every little gap in the Rabite-felt leggings and cloak Rei wore to help save herself from said cold.

Breath streaming out in front of her on that fitful breeze, she crunched down a path barely visible underneath the drifts—it was more easily marked by the lack of large rocks and ice-adapted plants, and an abundance of white-furred Rabites and other monsters.

Though the crunch of snow was disturbingly like the noise her steps had made when she had walked inside Lucemia, a fact that still made her shudder months after the event. She was wrestling with her thoughts, fighting to get them away from that traumatic experience—and the ache those memories brought up in the faint scars across her shoulders—when she nearly bumped into a lanky figure that she knew.

He was bundled up like she was against the cold, though a faint shimmer betrayed some sort of heat-based spell as did the partially-melted footprints he'd left in the snow. "Mephianse?" Rei queried, rather startled. She had not at all expected to find the headmaster of Geo's mage academy all the way out here.

Let alone find him out here with despair dragging at his shoulders. "Nakratos..." he murmured into the breeze, softly enough that Rei could barely make it out. "There is no such thing as Faerie treasure. Your deceased wife will not come back to life..."

"Mephianse?" This time she seemed to get through to him, for he turned to look at her with surprise masking the sorrow.

"Oh, I need to get back to my students," he said, sounding as though he'd just woken from a trance. Still distracted, he told Rei, "You will not find Faerie treasure here, young traveler. You might end up getting turning into an ice statue by the ice witch." He turned away again, voice whispering out on a cloud of fog. "Just like my brother."

"Mephianse, snap out of it!" Rei called, growing concerned. Where was the sharp mind that had tried to summon the stars from the sky? "It's me, remember? Rei Venstry. I'm the one who took the twins Bud and Lisa in, don't you recall?"

But he only shook his head and walked off, oblivious to her voice or perhaps only her words. Rei was left standing in the snow with her cloak billowing in the growing winds, chilled more in the spirit than the flesh. _Like hell I'm going to leave him alone like that!_ Determination setting her jaw, she tugged her hood up and crunched after him. Damned idiot would probably get himself munched by a...a...well, probably not by a snowshoe Rabite, she allowed, but there were plenty of things that would be perfectly happy with a nice bit of sprite meat.

After a few twists and turns she found the small campsite that held the small party from Geo. Each student was dressed in heavy wools and silks for warmth, several of them huddled around the mage-fire burning in rainbow colors amidst the hearthstones. Mephianse had made it here before her and was crouching on the far side of the fire while he warmed his hands.

"Pack up your belongings," he was telling his handful of students when Rei found them, "we are leaving."

The students all protested at once, voices nearly blurring together. "What about the Faerie treasure!?" demanded one student, sounding rather upset. Not at the loss of treasure, but at the missed chance of adventure.

Mephianse scowled. "I'd much rather see ourselves alive. Let's go."

"But...your brother lost his life looking for the treasure!" another boy cried.

A third added, "You're looking for the treasure to save your brother, right?"

"It is believed that Faerie treasure lets you meet with the deceased..." allowed the headmaster slowly, before he sighed and went back to warming his hands. "But perhaps he was reunited with his wife through death."

There was a long pause in which Rei gratefully stepped over to the fire to thaw herself out a bit. The student nearest her broke it by asking, "Mr. Mephianse?"

"What is it?"

The boy offered a sheepish smile. "Can we sit by the fire just a little bit longer?"

Mephianse blinked, but nodded. "Go ahead."

He promptly dropped back into his own thoughts, leaving Rei to defrost and talk to the students. "What's going on? What's all this about treasure and Faeries and witches?" she asked the boy on her left when the boy on her right mumbled that he wanted to go home.

"There's an ice witch up ahead," the boy told her with enthusiasm. Honestly, she was beginning to wonder about the self-preservation instincts of some of these kids.

"There are rumors that monsters and ice witches lurk here," one of the boys by the lone tent piped, having decided like Rei that the headmaster was quite deep in his own thoughts and wouldn't rouse for a Boink getting dropped on his head. "Mr. Mephianse might be scared of them."

Rei lifted an eyebrow. "I kind of doubt that..." She trailed off, noticing that Mephianse had stood up abruptly and was staring out towards the main parts of the Snowfields. "...Mephianse?"

"Maybe Nakratos has a whole new life now..." he murmured to himself, barely audible over the breezes that romped even here. The entire camp was silent for several very long moments before the lanky bull-man seemed to come to a decision with a sharp nod. "But...You students stay here!" he barked, striding for the path leading out. "I will be right back!"

The students shouted his name in surprise after him, but he was already long gone. Rei straightened up, stamping extra snow off her shoes and giving the children a warm smile that she suspected wasn't much warmer than her toes. "I'll go keep an eye on him," she offered as she went to follow the half-melted prints of the sorcerer. "You boys...toast marshmallows?"

"Did we even bring any?" she heard one student ask his fellows just when she rounded the curve out of sight.

Mephianse's tracks weren't at all hard to follow once she'd gotten back to the main field. His were the only prints that were sunk more than an inch or thereabouts in the white blanket of snow—in fact, aside from the occasional round dents of Rabite bounces or other tracks she wasn't sure of, his were the only footprints at all. Certainly the only ones that went in such a straight line.

Odd, though. From the tracks Rei would be willing to bet he'd already been down this southern path before. Why was he going back?

The breezes carried snatches of a conversation to her, half in the rumbling bass of Mephianse, the other half...Rei shook her head and listened harder, one hand lifting to silence her hair ornaments. The other voice sounded as though someone had made icicles into windchimes, and then given them speech. Ringing, delicate, clear and cold, it was a voice made for winter.

Clearing another small ridge and lumps of snow-shrouded bushes, she found Mephianse standing before a stunningly beautiful woman with ice-blue skin and hair the color of a glacier's heart. She was gowned in a dress that was a soft purple—not very far off from the purple in Rei's own outfit—but the material was plush and thick, almost like a beast's pelt sewn in a piece that still flowed like ice-melt around her. Wrapped around her hair was a scarf of mist that followed the curve of her body towards her cloven feet. And she was floating a good two feet in the air with her arms crossed quite firmly over her chest.

"Did you not call me an 'ice witch' a while ago?" she was reminding him sharply by the time that Rei had come within proper earshot. Mephianse, hunched and miserable, winced badly and stammered an apology, raising his hands in a gesture of pleading.

"But tell me the truth!" he cried desperately. "Please!"

"How many times do I have to tell you that he is alive?" the woman asked him, tapping a foot against thin air in a fashion uncannily like Olbohn. "_You_ are the one who was telling everyone that I killed him." She scowled when there was only silence from the mage. "You still don't believe me, do you?"

Mephianse hit his knees in the snow, bowing his head to the queenly woman. "Please understand!" he begged her. "He was my only brother!! I just did not want to believe it!" Raising his head, he asked her, "Is that really Nakratos?"

She nodded, softening a little in the face of his grief. "His magical powers were amazing..." she answered gently, voice the hissing of snowflakes on glass. "To survive in this brutal environment, he became a snow monster. He's still waiting for the Faeries at the Garden of Icicle Flowers."

Shaking his head, Mephianse muttered an oath that nearly had the snow melting without magic. "Nakratos, what a fool you are..." he breathed. "You cannot do anything to Faeries that way..."

Drifting down until her cloven toes nearly touched the snow, the woman chided him with, "Nakratos no longer has a human mind. You that, don't you? This is the truth you refused to hear until now."

The headmaster got to his feet slowly, with the kind of care that old people reserved for their weary, brittle limbs, and remarked that he would like to free his brother, even if he could only send him down to the Underworld where Nakratos' wife waited for her husband.

The Faerie—for to Rei she could be nothing less—stepped aside on the air and gestured to the path beyond her. "Is that what you wish to do? Go right ahead."

Mephianse took a breath, took a step...and faltered. "I can't," he admitted, slumping where he stood. "Even if he is no longer human, I cannot kill my own brother!"

Rei spoke for the first time since she'd left the little campsite, causing both Faerie and mage to turn to her in surprise. The knife-fighter only kept her gaze steady on brown orbs and said, "I will do it for you." When noiseless shock was the only reply, she gave the headmaster a crooked, self-depreciating smile and added softly, "I've had to help someone destroy a loved one before when blood-magic had driven him mad. It hurts, but I would rather take a scar on my heart than let someone shatter theirs." She walked by the speechless Mephianse and patted his shoulder as she went, passing the Faerie with a courteous nod that was returned with equal grace.

Beyond the Faerie there was only a fresh expanse of purest white, dotted here and there with the blurred strokes of a bush's winter leaves or the stark gray shapes of hulking mounds of stone wrapped in shawls of ice. Rei followed a hunch and went left when the path branched apart at a large clearing; she found herself only a minute or two later at a point where the land folded, shaping a narrow band amidst growing hills. Far off, Rei could see the first fog-shrouded glimpse of the Norn Peaks from where she stood at the tail of their mountain range.

She lifted her nose into the restless breezes and inhaled, wondering if the garden that the Faerie had spoken of would smell like real flowers and if she could smell it from here. Instead the smell of beast hit her nose, cold from the weather but still smelling of heavy, musky fur. Caught by surprise she burst into a fit of coughing, barely catching sight of a blue sphere thickening from out of empty air just yards ahead of her.

The world rippled; a shape formed. And Rei tilted her head back to take in the hulking monster that glared down at her from a rather familiar height, though the head of the beast was unexpectedly smaller than that of a Du'Inke or a Du'Cate. His head was slung low on the first neck she'd seen on one of these giant-ape types; glittering told her of a golden collar peeking out from the thick fur growing there. Instead of an axe or other portable weapon this monster bore heavy upper fangs much like the ancient descriptions of a 'saber-toothed cat'.

And unlike the other giant apes she had fought, this fellow was a soft greenish color—and his fur was impeccably clean.

His temper, however, was identical to all the rest, and he proved it by letting out a bestial roar and attempting to squash her flat. Rei ducked and rolled, cursing as snow took the opportunity to find its way down the back of her cloak and nibble on her spine, and popped back up with her knives out and gleaming. The thin winter sunlight flashed and sparkled on the silvery blades as Rei dove into the fight headlong.

The beast that had been Nakratos howled and stomped, kicking out with hobnail shoes to try and catch her mid-jump. She dug her knives in and scrambled up the heavy leather to slash and cut at the heavy fur below his knee, managing to score on flesh before he could throw her off. Dignity thrown to the wind, Rei was cursing overly-large monsters and the woeful fact that she had yet to invent a flying spell for all that she was worth, half the time drowned out by the roars of her opponent.

It certainly wasn't the easiest fight she'd had of late. The monster—which she had decided to call a Du'Mere since it no longer had Nakratos' mind—had a ridiculously thick pelt that acted like armor against her weapons as much as it did for the cold, and she had to cut it away before her knives would be able to bite down on anything of substance. Naturally, the Du'Mere objected strenuously to that and to her and so constantly kicked out or swung its large paw-hands at her in an effort to flatten her into the snow.

After a few minutes Rei made a tactical retreat and pulled out her most recently-made panpipe flute, raising it to her lips just as her opponent reoriented himself on her. A harsh series of notes brought a swell of Mana crashing down into a localized inferno on top of the Du'Mere, burning away the protective fur and leaving him open to the knife-fighter's advances.

The fight was over fairly quickly after that. Without his fur to save him, the Du'Mere succumbed to the combination of both the bitter cold and his wounds and tumbled to the blood-stained snow. Rei cleaned her knives and sheathed them, raising her hands in the age-old prayer that she had only used before on Akravator's dragoons to trace a bright net of cleansing Mana against the winter air. It whirled itself briskly around the fading shell of the monster, sweeping away the false visage to coax the brilliant blue sphere she'd seen earlier out into open air.

For a moment the sphere—the soul—hovered at about head-height. Then it bobbed once and shot up into the clear winter sky, trailing the wisps of Rei's prayer behind it as it went. Rei watched it until she couldn't see it anymore before, then turned and started walking back.

———

Mephianse gazed in frank surprise at the knife-fighter when she reappeared. Her hair was standing every which way from a combination of slush and mud, her clothes were liberally coated in melted snow and darker streaks that could have been either mud or blood, and she was gazing right back with an exhausted kind of calm as she cradled a horned egg in her hands.

"The monster is gone," she told him gently. "Nakratos is free, and likely seeks out his wife's shade as we speak."

"You freed him for me," Mephianse replied gratefully. "Thank you."

Rei smiled, cradling the sleeping egg a bit closer. "You're welcome, for what it's worth."

"Now how do you feel?" prompted the Faerie woman, hands propped on her hips as she floated a couple of feet away.

"...Not so great," the mage admitted, giving both females a bleak smile.

With a huff of irritation, the blue-skinned woman crossed her arms over her chest again and leaned forward. "You still don't believe me, do you?"

Mephianse turned to look towards the mountains, refusing to look at anyone until he could regain some measure of his fraying composure. "Can we stop talking about that!?" he demanded, voice cracking on the last syllable. "It's over now!"

"Oh, you need to make eye contact when speaking," the Faerie woman scolded as she wagged a finger at him. "That's important, you know."

Rei blinked at the two rapidly degenerating into an old-fashioned argument and let a more genuine smile creep onto her features. "I think I'll just leave you two alone to work things out," she told deaf ears. And with a swirl of Mana, she teleported home.

———

_'Despite the evidence pointing to their ancestral origins, the penguins of today are vastly different from those ancestors in that they cannot abide freezing temperatures. When following a treasure map located and retrieved by myself and the crew of Captain Tusk, we found ourselves at the Fieg Snowfields where'_

Rei sneezed violently in mid-sentence, hastily gripping pen and ink-bottle to prevent them from tumbling onto the book she was writing in. It had been a couple of days since she had returned to Fieg with the pirate penguins, almost a week since the incident with Mephianse and his ill-fated brother, and once again Rei found herself with a doozy of a cold.

Swearing that she would never go on an adventure with that scatterbrained lot again without at least a change of clothes and some form of citrus on hand, the knife-fighter re-dipped her pen and resumed.

_'_—_where I was promptly abandoned by the handful of crewmen that had been chosen to go with me. Evidently, despite the heavy cloak and tunic that each wore, the cold was absolutely unbearable to them, and they immediately fled back to the ship for the warmth of their cabins. _

_ 'Left to my own devices and still trying to follow the map, I encountered a series of Faeries that proceeded to enhance or devolve my ability to see them, starting with the Faerie named Fiorentina. She claimed herself to be a Class One Faerie and asked if I wished to be bespelled to see Class Twos, thereby confirming previous theories of the Venstry family that the hierarchy of these magical beings affects more than social ranking. Naturally I agreed and was granted the spell.' _

Rei sniffled, coughed, and reached for the mug of tea sitting close at hand. She breathed the fresh aroma of the rising steam gratefully, letting it loosen her sinuses a bit as she dipped her pen again.

'_Following Fiorentina, I met well over half-a-dozen Faeries of various levels, including the ill-tempered Pietta. I was forced to retrace my steps when she reduced my ability back to seeing only Class Two Faeries. Eventually, however, I was instructed to seek out Ehrlang and warned that I would only have one chance at finding him. _

_ 'I thought that meant one chance only, but no. I discovered that it meant that each time I would talk to the wrong Faerie at that stage, I would simply have to seek out the one called Lakshmi again to have my vision brought back up to Level Seven. Which was a good thing, as Ehrlang proved difficult to locate. After well over two hours of searching and backtracking, I located him in the clearing just prior to the spot where I fought the transformed Nakratos, as well as two other Faeries. Upon correctly guessing his identity, Ehrlang granted me a ring of not inconsiderable magical power and the right of passage to the Faeries' Garden of Icicle Flowers. (See _'Lands of Fa'Diel, Fieg Snowfields' _for full illustration.)'_

The sprite grinned at the thought of the ring currently sitting in her smithy, just waiting for her to recover enough to play with it. Ehrlang had called it a 'Draupnir' and she had every intention of boosting it and giving it to Xan as a birthday present—along with the Sky Dragon that had hatched from the egg she'd found down the other snow-lined path. Shard was a good companion as Rabites went, but her brother needed a little more companionship than one Rabite. _Besides which,_ she added wryly to herself, _if I don't give the little Spark to him and he found out I have a dragon in my barn, I'd never hear the end of it._

It was her brother's one selfish desire and had been for years. Collecting Jumi tales was one thing; that was just following their family's tradition of lorekeeping. Xan had been searching for a dragon egg to tame and raise for himself for as long as Rei could remember. Little Spark had been taken home by Rei when Pelican hadn't shown up—the poor bird had told her later that ice had kept forming on her wings so much that she couldn't get near Fieg—and now the only problem (aside from his growing appetite) was keeping him a secret long enough to make him a birthday present.

Her smile took on a wry edge. If Spark kept trying to eat her out of house and home, she would have no problems making him an _early_ birthday present.

Fast on the heels of that thought came another hard sneeze and a curse on all penguin-kind and walrus captains who thought that crabs made good presents. She had _three_ of the little buggers running around in her study now. If she was lucky, Spark wouldn't catch scent of them and wreck her study trying to eat them. He _lived_ for seafood.

Sighing at dragons and their seemingly-bottomless stomachs, Rei re-inked her pen and went back to writing.

———

_To my precious, beloved, wonderful sister..._Rei grinned; someone had evidently spilled the beans about her birthday present to Xan, if the greeting in his latest letter was anything to go by. She was checking on things in Domina since her cold was now an unpleasant memory and spring was in full riot. Passing by the path towards the western fields, her sensitive ears caught a snatch of familiar music, making the sprite turn her feet towards the Mana Goddess fountain and the square.

She found Diddle and Capella playing there and gave them an absent-minded wave and a nod as she went back to reading her letter and walking towards the marketplace. Xan was telling her about one of his adventures with the pirates—it seemed like she wasn't the only one they insisted on dragging into trouble. Apparently they'd found another map with his help and had gone to Madora beach to find that once again, the Diggers had gotten there before them.

Xan then told her about how Captain Tusk had handed him some very odd looking currency that the walrus had called 'Halo coins' and had told him to start bribing.

_'Dudbears are ridiculously easy to bribe,'_ Xan wrote, _'but you've got to know which one in the group to bribe. Went through three coins before I found the one who'd let me pass.'_ Rei found herself a seat over by Meimei and kept reading, laughing when she read about the canny trades that Xan had made farther into the Madora caves. Always thinking ahead, he'd traded with the next appropriate Dudbear for some small, brightly colored glass bottles in return for some of his coins; he'd then gone and used the bottles to trade for further passage and a couple of pretty, rounded shells. He'd enclosed one of each of the three items in the letter, which she had left at home. The coin and shell fit inside the mouth of the bottle, which was now sitting on the windowsill in the kitchen as a lightcatcher.

_'So we finally get to the treasure chest, which I'd have to guess was in that place with the talking crab that you told me about last year, and all of a sudden Roger and more of his Diggers show up. Well, I still had some of those Halo coins left, so I told the Dudbears they could have them if they got Roger out of there. Damned if it didn't work. So Tusk got the treasure and gave me some Wendel Silver for my troubles._

_ Anyway, things have been pretty quiet lately, though I keep sensing your Mana signature every now and again. You'll tell me if you start having trouble with your powers, right? I don't want you to fry your brain or anything like that by listening too hard to the world-song.' _

Rei made a face. It figured he knew about that part. Why she ever bothered to try and keep secrets from him when he always found out anyway...

_ 'Ah, but I'm just being an overprotective brother, I guess. I plan on coming home for a vacation for a while before summer sets in; I'm tired and I worked out the itch for a while. It'll be nice to just sit down at my own desk, talk to my cactus, and help my Trent work this year's plantings. So you'll see me soon, little cat! Love, Xan.' _

Rei tucked the letter into her pouch and rose to her feet, dusting off her clothes before she turned her feet to the path east out of the main areas of Domina. There hadn't been any sermons from Reverend Nouvelle for a couple of months now and she wanted to see what kind of repairs their modest little church needed after the winter storms. Because if she had to guess, she would place Vizel gold that the Reverend was still out in the White Forest, learning from and about the Lilipeas.

Thus, no one would have been keeping an eye on the aforementioned church. Rei respected the man too much to let the house of his worship fall to pieces because of a lack of care. Thus, the visit.

Studying the outside as she walked up the small dirt road, Rei let a mild frown tug at her mouth from concentration. The exterior _looked_ sound enough. The roof wasn't showing any obvious leaks nor were there any signs of storm debris scattered around the lawns or in the somewhat overgrown garden peeking from around back. Maybe some of the other residents had come by and patched things up without her. Or maybe the Reverend was back?

She quickened her steps with hope rising in her chest. She _liked_ the Reverend; he was a sensible sprite and was always willing to lend an ear. Since none of her usual sounding boards were around, it would be nice to have someone to talk to for a change. Rei raised her hand to the latch and turned the brass handle that showed recent signs of polishing...

And stuttered to a halt, shock making her eyes go wide as she took in the sight of a dozen Dudbears wandering aimlessly amongst the pews, with Roger and Putty the dog taking pride of place on the podium dais. "_Roger??_ What in the name of all that's holy are you _doing_ in Domina's _church_!?" Root and branch, were her adventures starting to follow her home, now!?

"I hereby declare this place the above-ground chapter of the Diggers!" the man half-shouted, posing up there on the dais. The Dudbears paused long enough for a short cheer before quieting to let Roger continue. "We took over this abandoned building and put it into use!"

Rei stared at him. "You...took over the Domina church...for that? Does Reverend Nouvelle know that you're here? Salamander and Shade, do the _townsfolk_ know? And...and...why the hell _here_?"

"We need more manpower for the expedition to the White Forest," explained Roger a little more calmly. "Where better to look than a busy town like Domina? And as soon as we acquire some capable men, we'll start! Salvation through labor!!"

Taking a deep breath, Rei was about to explain what she thought about this at fair volume, but stopped. "You know what? No. Just...no. You want to go on some harebrained trip to the White Forest? Fine." She raised her hands in a gesture of finality and turned back around to leave. "May you take much joy in your inevitable encounter with Sierra," she added under her breath, graciously not giving in to her temper by slamming the door. It was still a church, after all, even if a bunch of crazy, work-a-holic nutjobs decided to take it over for a base.

She stalked back through the marketplace and plunked herself down on the edge of the Mana fountain, propping her chin in her hands with a huff. She was going to sit here, watch Capella juggle, and listen to Diddle play his music until she stopped feeling like hitting something.

Or she would have, if Diddle had obliged her. Midsong he stopped and turned to his best friend to say in that slow drawl of his, "Capella, I really don't care to live anymore."

Capella nearly dropped his juggling balls, turning to face his friend with hands on his hips. "Stop sayin' that, or the Shadoles will take you again!" he scolded, winning a shudder from the musician.

"Oh, I hope not!" Diddle replied fervently. "I don't like the Shadoles. I like having fun, but fun doesn't last forever. After it's gone, I feel empty...like I don't exist anymore."

"Oh, come on." Capella resumed his juggling, eyes going up to follow the colorful arch of moving spheres. "It'd be borin' to have _all_ the time. Feel whatever you feel, like sadness and loneliness."

Diddle's sigh rather matched the one Rei heaved over by the fountain. "I know," the tadpole sprite drawled, morose. "But what I really want to feel is that...someone is feeling happy, somewhere."

That made Capella laugh. "Well, _I'm_ happy! 'Cause I'm not thinkin' 'bout anthin' difficult, like you are!"

"All I want to do is to be able to help someone...And to make that someone happy. That's all I want," Diddle said, attempting to explain himself a bit more clearly.

Engaged in that old habit of spinning a knife across her knuckles, Rei let out another sigh of her own. "Believe me, Diddle, sometimes helping people doesn't do anything but get you into trou...ble..." She trailed off at the sight of a Dudbear that had just darted into view.

The little construct took one sweeping look at the trio, spotted Diddle, and nodded firmly. "Dub!" With that, the Dudbear zipped over, grabbed Diddle, and ran off with him, leaving the musician's instrument lying there on the ground reproachfully. A heartbeat later it had run back, grabbed the harness attached, and carried that off, too.

Rei's knife clattered to the ground as the golden-haired sprite stared after the Dudbear in complete and dumbfounded surprise. "Since when do those furballs resort to kidnapping?"

Capella had run after them a few yards, stopping at the footbridge with a shout of dismay. "Oh no, Diddle! Diddle...You're gone again!"

Rei stood up, stalked over to the little monkey, and grabbed him by the back of the shirt. "Oh, that is _it_," she growled under her breath while she carried the squawking Capella back with her to the church. A brief check proved the building empty of all but Putty, the Diggers presumably having left for that expedition they mentioned just a short while ago.

"We're goin' after them?" Capella asked hopefully, answered by a sharp nod from his grumpy captor.

"Oh, yes. We are _definitely_ going after them."

The wood of the building creaked at the whoosh of air filling the abruptly empty space where they had stood.

———

Materializing with their feet sinking into the soft loam of the White Forest, Rei set down the amazed Capella and raised her head towards the treetops. "Sierra?" she called loudly, hearing no response but the wind rustling through the trees. "Sierra, do me a favor? Those idiots who undoubtedly just showed up a little bit ago? The ones who are probably doing something very stupid. Let me have them? I have a few things to say to them."

_"Mmm, and I'll bet none of those things will be a blessing,"_ came the quiet chuckle, making Capella jump and hide behind Rei. _"Very well. You'll find them down the path to your right from where you're standing. You can't miss them."_

"Thanks, Sierra!" Rei gave Capella's shoulder a pat and started pacing down the indicated path, the juggler following close at her heels.

"Who was _that_?" he asked quietly, casting frequent glances over his shoulder.

"A friend of mine who keeps an eye on the Forest," Rei answered briskly, eyes constantly roving for sight of her quarry. "I was going to let the Diggers meet her for themselves, but they went too far when they took Diddle." Glancing briefly down, she gave him a tight smile. "Don't worry. She's really quite kind when you're on her good side."

They broke into the clearing where Rei had once stopped Hamson from catching a Lilipea, and found a Dudbear there instead, running around in an effort to keep watch. Rei simply walked up and rapped her knuckles on its head.

_Flop._

Capella shot a look behind them as they left the unconscious Dudbear sprawled limply on the Forest floor. "Uh, Rei...?"

"Oh, he's fine. Just a bit stunned. We don't need him alerting Roger or forcing us back to the entrance." Reaching the next clearing, she delivered the same treatment to the two Dudbears running watch there.

In the third, she looked around at the matching number of Dudbears running around and pressed her lips into a tight line. "I know where we are, now," she remarked. "Capella, do me a favor and stick close, okay? We're going to have to make a run for it once I put this lot to sleep."

"'Kay."

"You see that little bit of a path leading out over there?" She pointed to a break in the undergrowth, barely visible for the plants growing to either side. When he nodded, she told him, "That's where we'll be running for. Don't fall..." Rei paused and reconsidered. "On second thought..." Hands darting out, she scooped him up and settled him piggy-back behind her, making sure he had a secure grip before she went into motion.

_Bonk. Flop. _

Twice more, and Rei darted for the opening, clearing it just as she heard the first dazed 'Gak' from her victims. "'M glad you're on my side, Rei," Capella mumbled into her ear, making her chuckle for a moment.

"A lot of people say that."

The next moment Capella was sliding off her back to run over to a small figure next to the looming frame of Roger. "Listen up!" Roger was shouting to his crew. "Keep digging until there's nothing left! No one can stop us here! Make everything into one big hole! Sir Diddle can make any monster fall asleep!"

"Dub!" came from all throats, as the entire crew but Diddle went racing off down the path. Even Roger left, no doubt to keep an eye on his people as they worked. Rei wondered to herself if they were aware that monsters tended to originate down that way.

Capella, in the meantime, happily latched onto his friend in a relieved hug. "Diddle! Are you alright?"

Rather surprised, Diddle willingly returned the hug as he asked, "Capella? What did you come here for?"

Rei looked on with some amusement when the naïve tadpole sprite was grabbed by the shoulders and firmly, if briefly shaken. "I came lookin' for you, Diddle! You're not hurt?"

"No, I'm not hurt. I'm only helping these people here."

Capella blinked. "Who are you helpin' out?"

"The Diggers."

The juggler facefaulted. "WHAT!? Don't you know they're real baddies?!"

Unfortunately the noise of Capella's shock had attracted attention. Roger came running back, annoyed and somewhat breathless from digging. "Who goes there!?" Which only made Capella gasp in fright and hide behind Rei again.

The knife-fighter set her feet and crossed her arms before she told the two smaller sprites in a deceptively mild tone, "I wouldn't call them 'real' baddies. They're amateurs at it compared to some of the _real_ bad guys I've dealt with."

"They are not bad people, Capella, Miss Rei," Diddle protested, backed up by a nod from Roger.

"That is true!" agreed the loin-cloth-clad human, crossing his own well-muscled arms across his bare chest as he nodded again. "No one is really bad in this world. Sometimes what people do goes against what they believe. Isn't that so, Sir Diddle?"

Diddle turned a bright smile towards his best friend. "See, Capella? He is a nice person."

"He's just pretendin' to be a nice person!" Capella shot back, not entirely unjustified.

Rei squared her jaw and raised her chin a bit, daring Roger to answer her challenge. "Then by your logic, it is just and lawful to kidnap an innocent boy and convince him that _strip-mining a dragon's forest_ is a wise idea? By all means, do explain your reasoning."

Roger, however, was saved from answering by the breathless and frantic arrival of one of his Dudbear crew, running back from the direction in which they'd gone. "Dub!!" it yelled in panic, barely managing a salute before skidding to a halt before them. A heartbeat later the rest of the crew rushed up in similar states of disarray.

"What's the matter?" Roger demanded.

The Dudbear spokesman immediately pulled its face into a contorted expression and fell over, then bounced up to unleash a string of syllables that, as far as Rei could translate, emphatically spoke of something that fell into the category of Not Good.

Since Roger had a bit more practice, he was able to translate a bit more than that. "A monster came to attack!?" he repeated in Common, aghast.

"A monster!?" echoed Capella.

Roger took a deep breath and raised a finger towards the sky. "Dudbears! And Sir Diddle and the monkey there!"

"Oi! My name's Capella!"

The juggler's protest was waved off as Roger went on. "Fine, whatever! You guys take care of it!" And he bolted off towards the entrance of the Forest.

"You're leavin' us here to fight the monster!?" Capella shouted after him in disbelief.

"We should all get out of here!" suggested Diddle, a sentiment that was firmly agreed upon by the remaining Digger crew. As one the group dashed off, leaving Rei to purse her lips thoughtfully as she strode forward, cracking her knuckles as she went.

At the far end of the path there was a monster that rather resembled the goat-legged, goat-horned, heavyweight demons that could be found in the Underworld. It growled at her, faltering a bit when her thoughtful expression bloomed into an anticipatory grin echoed by the last crackings of her knuckles.

The monster appeared to start reconsidering the wisdom of getting out of bed this morning as the knife-fighter approached, still wearing that smile of anticipation.

———

In one of the clearings closer to the entrance of the White Forest, Capella hid a wince at the loud crunching sounds coming from behind them and poked Diddle in the shoulder to get his attention. "Um, hey, look, Diddle!" he said brightly, hiding another wince at a particularly loud screech of pain. "They all ran away!"

Perfectly willing to go along with the distraction, Diddle nodded. "Oh, yeah!"

"See?" Capella added, "You were being tricked into this."

Diddle agreed sadly, then cheered up and said, "But it was fun."

Capella facepalmed. "Oh, geez, Diddle!"

———

"I'm telling you, Lil' Cactus, I am going to give that Roger such a whack the next time I see him."

"Diggers!"

———

AN: seriously, strip-mining a dragon's forest? What the hell was Roger thinking?


	34. Fluorite

———

Rei stepped out of desert spring heat and into an unexpectedly dim room, her brow furrowing as she took in the empty place behind the register of Geo's jewelry shop. She was here to purchase a few things from the shop's owner and ask him some questions about precious stones; it was part of the latest project of her two foster-children and Alex was supposed to have been the easiest one to find for both.

But by the ringing silence of the modest shop, Alex wasn't here. And if one was to judge the dust collecting on the various display trays and the stale taste of the air, he hadn't been for quite some time. Still, to be sure, she took a few steps farther into the room. "Alex?" she called uncertainly. "Alex, are you here?"

Niccolo, who had invited himself along on her trip when she'd bumped into him by the juice stand, huffed his displeasure at the shoddy surroundings when he wedged his bulk through the door. "He calls this a shop? It's hardly bigger than a closet!"

"Yes, and you were selling overpriced pieces of junk out of your pack until you swindled the Palace of Arts out of Kristie," Rei shot back readily. "Now hush, rabbit, I'm trying to listen."

She took a couple steps to the side, her fingers brushing against a carved wooden chest whose top was inlaid with an elaborate design of jewels and metals. "Alex?"

Mana hooked just behind her navel as a pretty, female voice echoed through her head. _"Somebody! Come here!"_

———

For the space of six heartbeats there was dizziness and the distinct sensation of free-fall—and Rei knew that feeling well after two trips to Leires—before the world reshaped itself around her. The problem was that what she had been expecting to be up was down and seemed to be quite intent to demonstrate.

Anticipating a jarring impact as her landing, Rei was pleasantly surprised when she thumped down on something quite squishy and soft instead, the texture half-coarse, half-fluff against the bare skin of her arms and legs. "Uff! Alex needs to put a warning on that chest," the knife-fighter complained half-heartedly, pushing her hair out of her eyes to try and figure out what she'd landed on.

A disgruntled scowl met her searching gaze, earning a sheepish grin as Rei quickly slid off of Niccolo's considerable bulk of a stomach with a muttered apology. She'd already noticed the young woman about her own age sitting on a bed shaped exactly like an oversized jewelry box, but she was more curious as to _where_, exactly, she and Niccolo had landed.

It was a room not terribly much larger than the one she'd just left, lined ceiling to floor in some kind of padded, rose-pink silk, with the carpet plush as any she'd ever felt beneath her feet only a few shades darker. There was a small vanity with a matching wooden closet against the left wall and a low table set with two chairs and a teapot on the right. Three or four potted plants kept the air fresh, but Rei was unable to pinpoint a source for the illumination in the room.

_Small jewelry box for the bed, large jewelry box for the room,_ Rei concluded. _Where are we?_

"Hello," greeted the young woman sitting on the bed, looking at them with tired, soft brown eyes. They matched well with her glossy brown hair, and went just as well with the West-style noble's robes she was wearing, all in a vibrant jade green.

And then the young woman's core, which had blended almost perfectly with the shade of her robes, chimed in welcome, thereby yanking the metaphorical rug from beneath Rei's unsteady feet. "I am Florina, the Jumi of Fluorite."

"Greetings, lovely miss," replied Niccolo, going into his routine when it appeared to him that Rei's brain had completely and thoroughly shut down. "I am the wandering Niccolo, peddler of smiles. What, if I may be so bold, would such a fair maiden as you be doing in a place like this?"

"Alex hides me here, away from the jewel hunter," replied Florina, huddling a bit on herself at the thought.

Rei's voice startled them both, hoarse with shock. "Alex? _Alex_ was the one who hid you here?" Niccolo glanced over and did a double-take: the knife-fighter's skin had gone ashen pale, white as new milk or quartz, and her eyes were bleak and almost feverishly bright against the pale canvas of it. She looked, for some reason, like she was going to faint for the first time in their acquaintance.

Meanwhile, Florina was nodding. "Yes. He's very kind to protect me so much. But I have a lot of bad dreams," she admitted softly.

Rei opened her mouth to say something but had to step hastily aside as something—or rather, some_one—_came plunging into the room into the space occupied by Niccolo, who had never stepped away from the golden summoning circle inlaid in the floor beneath his feet. The rabbit-merchant went sprawling once again, this time on his stomach with the new arrival perched safely up on his back.

"Pufwa," complained the petite sprite as she stood and floated into the air, dusting off her long blue robes as she went. Niccolo groaned, muttered something about charging usage fees, and got painfully to his feet behind her.

Two-and-a-half feet of stubborn witch met startled gazes of green and brown, and huffed. "Who are you?" Florina asked, sounding like she was not at all certain that she wanted the answer.

In response, the child-sized witch—whom Rei finally recognized as the one who had once argued with Nunuzac in her workshop back home—waved her arms around in a temper. "Do not ask who I am!" she scolded. "Your nightmares were so bad that even the tapir was scared away! Why are you having such scary dreams?" she added in demand, propping her hands on her hips and tapping a foot against empty air. "Explain!"

Rather taken aback, the Jumi woman blurted, "How am I supposed to know? I should be safe in here..."

"Safe? Ha!" the petite witch snorted. "I can't even go for a walk in your dreams. Oh! I haven't introduced myself. I am Belle the witch."

Florina considered her newest guest for a moment before she conceded and politely introduced herself, followed by Niccolo. "And I'm afraid I don't know your name," she told Rei apologetically—and noticed just how rattled the golden-haired sprite looked. "Are you alright?"

"Huh?" Rei blinked at her. "Oh. Yes, I'm fine. My name is Rei. Rei Venstry."

"Why hello, Rei," chirped Belle. "I must say, you look awfully familiar."

"Haven Tree Cottage. Nunuzac. And a Sproutling."

Belle lit up, beaming. "Oh, yes, now I remember! I never thanked you for going into the dream-world to fetch the poor dear, did I? That was quite a brave thing you did." Turning back to look at Florina, she kept talking to Rei. "Speaking of dreams, it looks like you were drawn here by the gravity of her nightmares. But nightmare gravity theory is something I'll discuss later. Yes."

"Oh, good, because that sounds interesting and I don't have anything to write with or on at the moment," the knife-fighter remarked, finding the tattered ends of her composure at last and knotting them back together.

Florina tilted her head to one side and asked, "What do you mean, 'drawn here'?"

"Dreams are structurally complex things," Belle explained to the confused Jumi. "The memories of the day becomes the dreams of night. So dreams are based on the world of reality. Dreams are created by the self. Dreams change when reality changes."

"...I just don't understand," sighed the brown-haired woman.

Belle shrugged. "Well, all I can say is, 'Have a nice dream!' That's all! This person was called to enter your dreams and kill the bad bugs inside!" Smiling at Rei, the petite witch asked, "Well, are you ready?"

Rei nodded. Say 'no' to someone in need? No chance. Especially if it was the missing Clarius of the entire Jumi race, who had been hidden away in a chest in a jewelry shop, of all places, by someone who made a living selling precious stones. She was going to take care of this new problem, find Alex, and shake some answers out of that bespectacled head.

"Rei, you should ask before you volunteer someone to help," Niccolo complained as Belle raised her arms. "Are we even getting paid for this?" echoed around the room for several long moments after the two had disappeared.

———

"—and honestly, what was all that about back there, anyway?" Niccolo was asking when the world steadied around them again. Rei took in the grayed out landscape of the Duma Desert and sighed, finding their current location bittersweetly familiar. "Rei? Hello? Fa'Diel to Rei?"

"I won't tell you, Niccolo," she replied absently, looking around at the plants and waters of the oasis. "I know you too well. But let's just say that I don't like the kind of surprise I just got, alright? Now help me find the way out...of...Oh, you have _got_ to be kidding me..."

"Hello!" greeted the rabbit merchant standing not ten feet away. "I am the wandering Niccolo, peddler of smiles! I'll guide you into Florina's dream for the special low price of only two-hundred Lucre."

The Niccolo that she'd brought with her made a small noise of satisfaction from where he stood behind her. "Even in a dream, I haven't forgotten how to make money. Sometimes I amaze myself."

Rei knew that the only reason she wasn't thumping her head against a cactus right now was because she figured that dream-spines would hurt just as much as real ones for as long as she was in here. What Elemental, Moon God, or Power did she tick off to be stuck with _two_ Niccolos at once?

Sending a silent blanket apology to the Powers in general, Rei told both the rabbits that she was going to take a quick look around. Her Niccolo shrugged and fell into step behind her while the dream Niccolo merely smiled and told her to walk around as much as she could. A quick exploration up and down the path led her to places that hadn't been connected to this path before, sending her back to the dream Niccolo in defeat.

"Two hundred Lucre, you said?" she asked in resignation. She dug into her pouch and pulled out the required fare when the dream merchant nodded. "Fine. Lead on, Niccolo."

"You sure know how to make the most of your money," chirped the dream version of Niccolo, happily pocketing the money and clapping his hands once. Everything fuzzed out and reshaped itself into a broad spot that Rei had never seen before, nestled amongst high dunes with another of the Duma sandfalls. Walking aimlessly around were a dozen Basketfish and a single disturbed-looking Revanshe. "Here we are!"

After hearing the lovesick sighs that were Basketfish's only response to the lovely dancer—and the flat-out denial that was her answer to all of them—Rei went back over to their patient guide and handed over another two hundred Lucre, reassuring her companion that no, since this was her idea she wasn't going to make him pay for any of it.

Dream-Niccolo clapped his hands again and took them to another place that looked half-familiar at best. Rei let out a soft, happy chuckle at the sight of a dream version of her Lil' Cactus wandering around with a broad smile on his little mouth. "Hey, Lil' Cactus. What are you doing here?"

"Desert, the desert!" sang her house-plant. "The desert is the home of my soul. Yup. I like desserts, too, but I can't live in a dessert. Nope."

It was the third place that stopped her cold, with the breath seizing in her lungs. Beside another sandfall, facing off with each other in stone-hard stubbornness, were Blackpearl...and Elazul. "A Lapis Knight...?" the legendary Jumi woman was musing aloud when Rei and Niccolo arrived. "What is your destiny?" Blackpearl asked of Elazul.

With the same sorrow Rei had heard when a pair of hurting blue eyes were looking up at her and saying, _she left me,_ Elazul answered. "I have none."

"Are you saying that you are a Knight with no one to protect? A Jumi all alone in the world is just like a pebble in the desert."

Elazul's reply was so soft that Rei almost didn't catch it. "With Florina's tears, my destiny shall be revived."

Blackpearl's hands smashed his words to the sands. "I have heard enough!! I would never cut away her life for cowardly Knight who let his Guardian die!"

_She isn't dead!!_ was what Rei wanted to say, but the words got stuck in her throat. Instead, Pearl's voice, soft and grieving, whispered across the dunes as her shade appeared behind a pacing Blackpearl for a heartbeat of time. _"Elazul...I'm sorry. I can't cry for you anymore..."_

"Pearl!!" Elazul cried, reaching his hand out for the shade that was no longer there and startling Blackpearl into whirling around to face him. Clenching his empty fist, the Knight turned back to the woman standing aloof before him. "If my anger was what kept you moving, then the light of the Clarius will keep on hurting people. The destiny of us stones is to heal and soothe, shining with light from the sun. So long as men fight over us, we light the flames of anger, and forget the power to heal." Eyes ablaze again, he demanded, "If that truly is our destiny, should we just destroy everything? What do you say, Lady Blackpearl!?"

But she only kept standing there, gazing at him with eyes the cold green of a glacier's heart. Letting his shoulders slump in defeat, the Lapis Knight opened his hand and stretched it out beseechingly towards his people's hero. "Blackpearl...I have not your strength...the strength to destroy it all. I can do only one thing...Open a small exit..."

With one last, raking look, Blackpearl turned and strode out of sight down the path. Hesitantly Rei stepped forward, one hand coming to rest on her friend's unarmored shoulder with as light a touch as she could manage. "...Elazul?"

"I am Elazul, Jumi Knight," he told her, his gloved hand rising to cover hers though he never turned around. "The Jumi are composed of Knights and Guardians. The knights watch over the Guardians, who in turn heal wounds with their tears. To a Jumi Knight, the life of a Guardian is more precious than his own. I failed to protect my Guardian. That is why I have no right to call myself a Knight."

The sourceless light rose, growing so intense that Rei had to shield her eyes to keep herself from being totally blinded. When she was able to lower her arm, Elazul and the sand waterfall had vanished, leaving exposed a path to somewhere deeper in the dreamscape.

Rei sighed, low and unhappy, and told the air, "You didn't fail to protect her, Elazul. You were letting her grow as a person. Living...real living...means you accept the pain along with the joy."

"Who are you talking to?" Niccolo wanted to know, looking around them. "That green-haired fellow is long gone, you know."

Rei shrugged and went over to their guide-version of the merchant, who had reappeared once Elazul's dream-form had left. "It still doesn't hurt to try. Come on, we've still got a ways to go." And she dug out another handful of coins.

———

They found Elazul and Blackpearl again at the next drop-point that their guide brought them to, Elazul once again attempting to reason with the fierce Jumi Knight. Or rather, he was trying to reach the one who had disappeared the moment that Blackpearl had resurfaced. "Pearl!!" he called desperately, hand once more outstretched. "Let me protect you, just once more!"

Blackpearl was not amused, nor in any mood to be gentle with the stubborn man who kept following after her. Turning to face him head on, she crossed her arms and reminded him sternly, "I am not Pearl. I am a Knight with a core of darkness. My destiny is fluorite. The beating in my chest is the black core, my true self. Away with you, Elazul!"

"Florina already had a Knight called Alexandra," countered Elazul. "The lonely pebble in the desert is you, Blackpearl!"

A very ugly picture was beginning to shape in the back of Rei's mind, but for sanity's sake she pushed it aside for a time when it would not crush her beneath its weight. Blackpearl, in the meantime, had loosened her stance by a few degrees and admitted, "Once, when my black core died, I left Florina with Alexandra."

Elazul seized on it and took a step forward. "Are you saying you'll turn back into Pearl...if you cut away your black core, Blackpearl!?" His sword sang beneath the sunlight when he drew it free, aglow in his hands with the longing of its wielder.

She only smiled mockingly at him and spread her hands. "Care to give it a try?" Blackpearl challenged, voice light.

Determination faltered as Elazul realized just what exactly he was doing. With slow, careful motions he resheathed his sword and brought his gaze back up to his people's champion, still waiting with her head slightly atilt. "Blackpearl...a Knight should protect but one Guardian. Everyone has a little power. And by combining our strength, we become a force to be reckoned with. What are you protecting, Blackpearl!?"

"Florina shed tears for all Jumi," Blackpearl answered. "That is why I must fight...Fight all who threaten the Jumi." And she turned to walk away.

Elazul's voice was sure and strong as he called a warning to her. "Don't turn your back on me, Blackpearl. That's when I can see my own destiny, Pearl."

The Jumi woman cast one last glance over her shoulder..and then walked away, vanishing as her dream-form came within a few steps of a watching Rei. Elazul stood there looking at them for a few moments as well, before he turned and walked up the other way, fading as he went and once more opening a new path behind yet another sandfall. By now Rei was thoroughly lost, but she was willing to bet the end of this journey through the dreams of a Clarius lay somewhere at the end of the new path. Ignoring the dream-merchant that had stepped into existence a moment ago, she set her feet and started running.

———

Not so very far away, two people confronted each other in the dream-world's version of the open plain where a knife-fighter and a Jumi knight had once done battle against a pair of summoned Axe-beaks. Standing near the bones of some long-dead beast, Sandra propped a hand on her hips and looked to her companion with troubled eyes. "Blackpearl...We are allies, right? What did you come here for?"

"To the Underworld I shall take you," replied the female Knight steadily. "I shall shut you away in darkness so you may never hurt others again."

"Even with only a thousand Jumi lives, Florina will recover!" Sandra retorted, the unease in her expression quickly being overtaken with one that Rei would have recognized if she'd been there. It was one she had worn herself on several occasions, when someone had threatened those that she loved. "You know how many lives Florina can save, do you not?"

"Fool!" Blackpearl strode forward, hands making the same cutting motion she'd used to dismiss the words of a naïve Jumi Knight. "Everything will just be repeated. After your powers are gobbled up, you will hunt more Jumi lives and replenish your strength." Stopping only a few feet from the jewel hunter, she demanded, "How long will you continue this?"

Sandra looked at her without a single hesitation and told her, "As long as we Jumi cling to life."

Blackpearl took another step forward, staggered, and fell to the sands with a groan. Her arms shook as she pushed herself upright enough to point an accusing finger at the other woman. "Do not...mock...me!" she gritted out, unable to miss the smirk that bloomed across coral-painted lips.

"It is over, Blackpearl," Sandra said, unable to resist a last jab as she added, "Looks like your heart of blackness will not last in the desert." The smirk only grew wider at the pained groan from the weakened Knight stretched out helpless at her feet.

Pearl's shade pulled itself from the air and crouched over the fallen Blackpearl, hands clasped beneath her chin in worry. _"That girl will be here soon..."_ she whispered to her other half, twisting to glance over her shoulder at the path leading into the heart of the dreamscape. _"Hang on!"_

Blackpearl growled as the shade of her gentler half faded. "I need...no help..." she snarled weakly into the sand in front of her nose. Sandra only gave her ex-ally another smirk, let out a brief, victorious laugh, and raced off into another part of the dreamscape.

———

When the jewel beast appeared in front of her, Rei never paused, but bunched her legs and sprang, knives out and glittering even in this watery light. Niccolo had barely enough time to realize that there even was a fight before Rei was already carving chunks out of the dismayed monster.

One strike, two, three, and she had enough Mana to unleash a newly perfected technique she had decided to call Phoenix for very good reasons. Niccolo managed to get a swipe or two in himself before Rei let out a battle cry that rose into the unearthly shriek of a huge bird. An explosion of energy rose from the knife fighter and spread wings of flame, shaping itself into a bird two to three times as large as the stunned jewel beast.

And then the Mana-crafted phoenix blasted through the monster like it was nothing but water-soaked paper, leaving only ashes and blue crystals in its wake.

Niccolo was left staring as Rei scooped up the prizes and went running off down the path.

———

Elazul ran forward when he spotted the white-clad form lying on the sands, never noticing the sprite running up the path far behind him. His eyes were for his Guardian, somehow restored to him and now lying on sand that was probably scorching her skin. "Pearl!!" he yelled, darting over and rolling her onto her side with gentle hands.

Precious aquamarine eyes blinked open with a sleepy murmur.

"Are you alright!?" he asked her, sliding an arm behind her to help her up into a sitting position. She blinked dazedly at him for a heartbeat...and then rolled onto her feet in a reflexive move Elazul would bet she'd learned from Rei.

"Oh, Elazul..." she breathed, looking him over just as he was doing to her. "Yes...I'm okay."

"What happened to Blackpearl?" he wanted to know, placing his hands on her shoulders. "Why did she turn into you?"

"Elazul," Pearl said firmly, startling her Knight into looking at her, really _at_ her, for the first time since he'd found her. "I'm alright," she reiterated in a gentler tone. "How about you?"

A reluctant smile quirked up half of his mouth as he pulled her into a hug and buried his face in her silky light brown hair. "Me?" he repeated into the loose curls behind her ear. "You ask if _I'm_ alright?"

"Well, Elazul," his Guardian teased softly as she returned the relieved hug, "you look a little strange."

He let out a wry 'humph' and pulled away, still wearing that quirky little smile that said he knew he was being teased. "Let's go, Pearl," was all he said after that.

The sweet young woman beamed at him and nodded, tucking her hands behind her back and rocking forward and back a little. "Alright!" she agreed cheerfully. "Let's go!"

———

Rei let out a faint rumble of irritation when she found herself back in the enchanted jewelry box with Belle and Niccolo. She had been running up the path after that flicker of sand-colored cape, only to be caught up in a swirl of Mana and returned here; she knew in the way of dreams what had happened with Elazul and Blackpearl, but she hadn't seen it happen for herself. And because of that, she was filled with a strong urge to go hunting for the real things and making sure they were still in one piece as well as in the guises they were _supposed_ to be in.

"Looks like she fell asleep," Belle murmured to the two of them, snapping Rei out of her worried thoughts. "Now the world of dreams is a bit safer." She added in the tones of one who had repeated herself many times, and would repeat herself many more, "Many think that dreams are make-believe worlds inside your head...But to dream is to merely view reality through a filter."

Drifting over to the golden summoning circle in the floor, Belle finished with, "Well, I'll be off! Sweet dreams, kiddo!" she said to the closed lid of Florina's jewelry-box bed. "I'll be back if you ever have nightmares again!" And she was gone.

Rei stalked over to the circle, dragging Niccolo behind her. They had barely reached the warm golden sunlight of the world outside the jewelry shop before Rei was sending Mana out in the instinctual patterns of her one and only teleport spell, intent on finding some much-needed answers.

Niccolo was left standing in the main square bazaar of Geo, wondering why everyone was running off on him today.

———

AN: Sorry if this chapter was a bit confusing or abrupt. Somehow, the dialogue sounded far less cheesy when I was reading it on the game...


	35. Teardrop Crystal

Last chapter of the holiday post. Be safe, everyone!

———

Rei strode into Amanda & Barrett's with her head high and her gaze moving constantly. This was where she had most often found Elazul, bar nowhere else, and so it was the place she'd hoped to find him now. A dozen clues and hints that had been scattered at her feet were coming together in dangerous and unsettling patterns; she wanted at least one trustworthy Jumi with her to say yea or nay to them before she started breaking things.

Fact one: Sandra was a jewel hunter hell-bent on gathering every Jumi core she could lay her hands on, by stealing the cores from unsuspecting innocents or by taking them by force.

Fact two: Sandra had used the same technique to knock a Sproutling briefly unconscious that the Jumi Rubens had.

Fact three: Sandra most definitely had a core herself, meaning Sandra was also a Jumi. This meant that the hunter was _killing her own people_, which was what made Rei really and truly want to thump some sanity back into that auburn head.

Other facts lined themselves up neatly behind the first: Sandra accused the Jumi she killed of losing their sparkle along with the capability to cry. Alex was the one who had hidden Florina away; Florina, the Clarius of the Jumi, the only one capable of restoring the lives destroyed by the war with Deathbringer and so many others.

Alex was the one who knew so much more about the Jumi than a normal shopkeeper should; far more even than Rei's brother Xan knew, when he had been researching the Jumi all of his life. Alex, who was always searching for stones that sparkled.

Diana had left her, Elazul, and Pearl a ring with set with a piece of alexandrite, that rare stone that changed colors according to what kind of light struck it and how. And Elazul's dream-shade had said that Florina had been left with a Knight called Alexandra when Blackpearl had left their hidden city.

There were two very common ways that the name Alexandra could be shortened; one name was meant for a male, the other for a female. And it would make horrible sense if the Jumi of Alexandrite changed genders like their core could change colors.

That was what she needed to ask Elazul, because she needed to know if the wicked, passionate Sandra and gentle Alex were one and the same.

But Elazul wasn't in the tavern.

Rei let out a quiet, fervent oath and whirled, running up the road towards the marketplace. She was going to ask MeiMei to read her fortune when a thought struck her—Elazul had mentioned once that he'd spoken to the Reverend about the town and her family, back before he'd gotten over his shyness enough to just ask her directly. So she changed destinations, passing by MeiMei's basket and Jennifer's produce cart and going up the short road to the town church.

Inspector Boyd was there, pacing uneasily on the ribbon of packed earth in front of the steps with his pipe clenched firmly in his teeth. "That couple..." he was muttering when Rei came within earshot. "Elazul and Pearl...I haven't seen them since...I wonder if..."

"No, they're fine," Rei told him with absolute certainty. While Florina's appearance had knocked her world sideways, she hadn't gotten even a hint of a sinking feeling involving any of her loved ones.

Boyd nodded and mumbled to himself, "Yes, yes, you're right." Rei waited a second or two until the Inspector realized that someone else had said that, and jumped, looking around wildly before spotting her. "That's right!" he almost shouted, pointing at her. "I have a favor I've been wanting to ask you."

"A favor?" Rei blinked at him, taken aback. She hadn't thought she'd left that much of an impression on the mouse-man. "Sure. What is it?"

"I need you to go to Geo and look for a vacant building there."

Rei blinked again. "Geo?"

"Nowadays, Geo is known as a big college town, but not too long ago..." Boyd made a face. "There was a shop there that sold Jumi cores, a truly despicable business. Of course, now it's deserted, but I want you to find it! As I said, I need you to go to Geo and look for a vacant building there."

It wasn't quite the same feeling as the loss of a loved one, but there was certainly some sort of sinking sensation in the pit of Rei's stomach. It felt rather like she'd swallowed the weight of the _Buccaneer_'s anchor. She was almost certain as to which shop Boyd was talking about, and it wasn't the café 'Sorry, Carl!'

"I'll be happy to help you find it," she told him, holding up her hand to stave off one of his enthusiastic responses. "But hang on just a moment. I have something I need to do, first. Will only take a couple seconds, I promise." She darted past him and up the steps into the church, figuring that, well, she was here...

Roger was striding around on the dais again as though he hadn't left two children to be eaten by a monster, and never saw her fist coming. She left him laid out on the faded pinkish-maroon carpet, clutching the brand-new lump on his head in pain. "And don't ever pull another stunt like that with children again, got it?" she called over her shoulder as she headed back outside. "Okay, Inspector, I'm ready!"

The mouse-man nodded. "Right! Let's go!"

And promptly let out an undignified yelp when Rei grabbed onto his shoulder and teleported them without another word.

———

A rumpled Inspector led Rei to the main bazaar in Geo, stopping in front of the very shop Rei was hoping he hadn't been talking about. "Here!" he said, gesturing to the jewelry shop 'Wendell'. "This is the place. Mr. Nunuzac used to come here looking for Jumi cores. How to disgraceful!" And while Rei was busy yelling mental obscenities to whoever was stacking the cards of fate against her, Inspector Boyd walked up to the door and gave it several hard shoves. "The door is rusted solid!" he grunted, still trying to shove it open. "Can you open it for me?"

Dusty-gold eyebrows went up and stayed up. "The door's open," she told him blankly, quite certain that there hadn't been so much as a speck of rust on the door when she'd been there less than an hour ago.

"You're just pulling my leg!" grumped the Inspector, stepping back and gesturing to the door. "Come on...Just give it a try!"

Rei came up and put her hand on the latch, finding an unexpected layer of grime beneath her palm. "What in Salamander's name...?" she whispered aloud to herself, before giving the door a quick shake and a push. With a creak of protesting hinges the door opened to the sprite, who stepped in almost without thinking.

Too absorbed with the scent of stale, dusty air that hit her nose and the cobwebs tucked away into the corners of the entryway, Rei never noticed when the Inspector let out a whoop of congratulations and attempted to follow her. Nor did she notice when a blue, Mana-filled barrier promptly shoved him back out into the street and shut the door with a smug 'click' of the latch.

Everything was in shambles. Dust blanketed the counter holding the register, the velvet-covered tables, and the floor, while the previously-neat displays of jewelry had been knocked askew or onto the floor entirely. Moths and other insects had been at the rugs and velvets, too, leaving them time-worn and full of holes.

Rei took it all in, swallowed hard, and decided that Boyd had been mistaken and that she was in the wrong place altogether. Because there was no way she would be willing to believe that the dust of years had settled so quickly and evenly in a place that had been clean—if empty—only this morning.

Nodding at this wise conclusion, Rei turned to leave. She had only just placed her hand on the handle when it turned, forcing her to spring back in time to avoid a smack to the face. The blow she dodged, but not the armful of white-and-honey-brown that collided with her amidst startled 'oofs'.

On her rump on the floor, Rei looked up into the wide aquamarine eyes of Pearl staring back. "Rei!" Pearl cried, face breaking into a smile. "It's been so long!"

The smile faltered when all Rei did was take a long, relieved breath and let it out slowly before she rose from the floor. When the silence only deepened at the soft-footed entrance of Elazul, Pearl was the one who broke it. "Rei? Are you alright?"

Another deep breath was let out slowly before Rei dredged up a poor imitation of her usual mischievous smile. "Yeah. I'm fine. It's just been...kind of crazy today. But how about you? What's going on here?" Frowning, she spoke a thought as it occurred. "Come to think of it, _why_ are you here?"

"We're fine," was Pearl's contribution. Elazul added soberly, "A lot, that's what's been happening. We've been doing some investigating. This place seems abandoned to others..."

"And nobody knows who Alex is! _Nobody_!" Pearl cried in distress.

"It's like time is warped..." Elazul finished, voice soft as he looked around at the dust and disarray.

"If it is, then the enchantment either broke very recently or it's been fluctuating," Rei told them. "I was here less than an hour ago and it wasn't anything like this. It only felt like Alex was on one of his trips and just hadn't gotten back yet."

Pearl nodded in agreement. "Something is strange. I feel it in my core," she remarked.

"Let's check it out," Elazul suggested.

Rei shook her head. "I can tell you right now that no one's been in here but me since this morning," stated the knife-fighter, gesturing to the even coating of dust on the floor. Nothing marred the gray blanket but the whirring of insect wings or the tracks of their larvae. "And if something feels strange, I'll bet I can show you what it is." _Unless something has gone even more terribly wrong than it usually does,_ she added in her own mind as she made her way over to the corner nearest the right-side of the door.

Or more specifically, to the intricately-decorated chest still sitting there with the omnipresent dust blurring its colors and lines into ambiguity.

Rei gently knelt in front of the chest and ran her hands across the top, mindful of the two Jumi hovering at her shoulders. A ghost of a voice rose to their ears, seemingly breathed out from the bright jewels her touch uncovered. _"Someone..."_

Elazul let his hand rest on one of Rei's shoulders as he leaned down, the blue curves of his eyebrows locking down into a frown of concentration. "I sense a powerful sparkle!"

Leaning on the other shoulder, Pearl made a soft noise of confirmation and added, "It feels so familiar...But where is it coming from?"

The knife-fighter lifted her hands and tapped gently on the lid. It sprang open to pour light into the room beyond.

———

Rei caught her balance this time and looked to the closed lid of the jewelry-box bed, peripheral vision picking up Elazul on her right and Pearl on her left—until Pearl dropped without warning into a dazed heap on the carpet. Both of her companions turned to help her as she moaned, "My core..."

"Pearl...What is it?" Elazul asked, sliding his hands beneath her elbows to help her back onto her feet. She leaned against him dizzily with one hand pressed to her forehead as the lid to the bed popped open.

Florina's voice was firmer than Rei had heard before when the Clarius spoke. "Don't try to lessen my pain, Pearl!"

Elazul's jaw dropped, taking in the elegant robes, the stubborn set of the delicate chin, and the crazed flickering of a taxed core. He wouldn't even begin to understand the significance of it had the stories of their people deteriorated with the spoken word as they had with the written. Of all the Jumi left in the world—and there were depressingly few—only one would have a core that bore the signs of life carved so heavily away. "Are...Are you the Clarius, the pillar of life that supports us all...?" he asked, hesitant to offend such an important person to his race.

Florina inclined her head as her core chimed weakly. "Yes, I am Florina, Clarius of the Jumi."

He made a noise suspiciously close to a squeak before he twisted his head to glance at his other companion. "A crazy day?" he demanded, answered by a shrug.

"You don't even know the half of it, yet. I was looking for you two, I'll have you know."

A moan from Pearl snapped the attention of both fighters back to the Guardian in Elazul's arms. "Florina..."

Gesturing sharply, Florina commanded, "Pearl, let me be! I don't want a part of your core. Turn off that white heart of yours."

She started to raise her hand in the start of a spell, only to have the turquoise-crystal glove of Elazul's close on her wrist in instinctive protection. All hesitation gone, the Jumi Knight demanded to know what she was going to do to _his_ Guardian. Only to be told that Florina was going to restore Pearl to her original form to ask a question, as the Clarius shook off his hand and raised her own once more. "Don't worry, I can't hurt her," she soothed him while she focused on the unsteady shape of Pearl. "I can only give, only heal." Closing her eyes, the green-clad Jumi drew a circle in the air with her palm. "Black core shining within, return to thy true form!"

Elazul leapt back as a storm of dark-petaled flowers whirled up from the feet of his Guardian, his support going instead to the wobbling form of Rei as a part of the knife-fighter's soul was once again wrenched into a different configuration. "Salamander and Shade," croaked the golden-haired sprite as she gratefully leaned into borrowed strength, "but I _wish_ you wouldn't do that."

Dusting a few sparkles of Mana energy from the ebony-hued sleeves of her coat, Blackpearl shot Rei a razor of a smile before turning to Florina with a deep bow. "What of the Mana Sword, the key to opening the Mana Stone?" Florina inquired after a short burst of coughing, all hints of her former meekness buried beneath the mask of a leader. "Is that what you gave Elazul?"

Blackpearl held up the curved blade of enchanted blue lazuli and Vizel Gold that had so often been employed in her other side's defense and shook her head. Elazul clapped a hand to his empty scabbard in shock, both fighters blinking at the one who had managed to obtain his sword without either noticing—and at farther than an arm's distance. "Unfortunately, this is from an ancient tribe of nomads," Blackpearl commented, offering the blade back, hilt-first, to the younger Knight. "They are a race that can see into the past," she added while Elazul resheathed the weapon. "They filled this sword with the past."

Florina acknowledged that with a tilt of her head. "There is something I must ask you, Blackpearl." Instead of subsiding, the coughing fits seemed intent on making themselves persistently known, possibly as a side effect from casting a spell when her core was already weakened.

"I want to ask you something, too," Elazul said, jumping into the conversation.

Only to have his people's hero motion him crisply into silence. "Stop. You are in the presence of a Guardian," Blackpearl warned him, "who is also the Clarius."

Florina overrode her erstwhile Knight's objection with, "Say it, Elazul. Perhaps I have the same question..."

Rei stepped away to let Elazul face the impassive Jumi woman squarely, with his feet and his jaw set. "I always wondered..." he began. "When I found you in the desert, you were Blackpearl with a black core. Then...as I held you in my arms, you acquired a white core. Whether in Leires or Mekiv, your changes between black and white. If you are Blackpearl, how was Pearl born? Who are you!?"

"Blackpearl..." Florina coughed. "Answer..."

"I..." began the older Knight, looking back and forth between the one she had protected and the one who had protected her, caught for the first time without words since Rei had met her. When Florina told her that she was ready to hear the answer, the proud shoulders slumped. "Alright," Blackpearl said, letting her dark core flash.

The ripple from it was not, as other core-flashes had been, a white color. It was a light that was at the same time dark as her namesake, touched here and there with a pearl's opalescent glow. It took the gaze and turned it black, images forming against the backs of closed eyes of what had happened centuries ago...

_ She had been called out here by Alexandra, to this oasis beyond their farthest border patrols. Here in the memory of that day, the smell of sunburnt vegetation was clearer to her than the plants themselves, which stood in green shadows around the stone cup of water. And there was Alexandra in her male form, turning towards her with undisguised relief gleaming behind polished lenses. _

_ "You came...Pearl..."_

_ She remembered scowling at the old nickname; this was neither the time nor place for such pet names, not with every tier of Etansel in an uproar. "What do you think you are doing?" she demanded of her successor as a Knight. "Taking Florina away?"_

_ "I wish to save her!" was the impassioned response as Alex opened his arms to her in pleading, as though simply by reaching out he could get her to understand why he had fallen to treason. "If the war drags on, many Jumi will be hurt. The compassionate Florina will cut away some of her life and shed tears..."_

_ She felt herself softening by degrees and forced her mouth back into a cold frown. "It is the duty of those who sit on the throne of the Clarius to support the race with their own lives," she reminded him instead. "After continuing the duty for a hundred years, the Guardian is released and a new Clarius is chosen. Until then, she must persevere."_

_ "Florina is going to die..."_

_ Fear bloomed in the pit of her stomach. "No..."_

_ Alex refused to look at her, one hand rubbing at the other arm as though cold despite the desert heat and his long sleeves. "She has changed since you joined the struggle. You will not find the Mana Stone in time!" he cried, violet eyes turning to her at last, filled with their shared heartbreak. "It is too late..." he finished in a whisper._

_ Blackpearl, because she was who she was and served as the shield to her people, did not allow herself to fall into her grief. Rather, she tried to persuade her comrade and friend to do what was right by their race. "Even so, Florina should be returned to the city. The suffering of others must not be ignored! She...Florina wishes it."_

_ And then the sorrow in violet eyes turned to hard determination as Alex shook his head. "No. Florina's wishes matter not," he declared quietly. "She is about to enter eternal slumber."_

_ Foreboding swallowed up the fear, chased after the grief with fangs that glinted in the darkness, while Blackpearl stared at her companion. "What...did you do?"_

_ "I trapped her inside Pandora's Box."_

_ "Trapped her?" Blackpearl echoed. _

_ "There was no other way..." And oh, how even now, those violet eyes begged her to understand! _

_ She did. Truly she did. Which was why she chose to bend instead of clinging to the traditions she had lived for a thousand years. "I see. Let's ask Diana to revoke the position of Clarius from Florina." And do so when Florina had been shouldering that duty for less than two-score years. _

_ But instead of pleasing him, the suggestion only served to turn Alex's gaze harder. "And make a new Guardian into the Clarius," he spat. "Will you tear off even more life?"_

_ "That is how we must live," Blackpearl reminded him, not ungently. "But I'll do my best with Florina. So please...take her back to the others. She is the symbol of the Jumi. She is the embodiment of hope." She turned to go, saying over her shoulder, "I will return tomorrow."_

_ Alex's voice stopped her cold, so filled with bitterness that she barely recognized that it was he speaking. "Will you turn your back, Blackpearl? Why do you help a race which can only live at the expense of others!?"_

_ The older Knight half-turned to look at him, speaking in the tone reserved for one who should have known the answer as well as she did. "I cannot betray my comrades." _As you have done,_ echoed around them unsaid._

_ Alex laughed, a short, sharp burst of sound. "You just don't get it, do you, you stone puppet?"_

_ Slowly, Blackpearl turned to face him fully. Sympathy and the love they shared for the gentle Florina could only stretch her patience so far, and Alex had officially reached that limit. "Puppet...?" she repeated in a tone she preferred to use on the battlefield against those who would harm her people. _

_ Her one-time student spread his hands and told her bitterly, "You always amazed me. You, who have lived for thousands of years. I heard from Florina that your core is black, and gives off no light, a shell for your own self. The Knight of the Clarius, Blackpearl, is just a stone puppet."_

_ "I am not a stone puppet."_

_ "You're a puppet without sparkle!" Alex shouted at her. "Not just you, all Jumi who've lost their sparkle, we're all puppets! We have lost the ability to cry and care for others. We are the ones who should die, not Florina!"_

_ "Alex..."_

_ And then Alex was suddenly Alexandra, who raised one of her heavy, sharp little throwing daggers with the declaration, "As one who protects such foolish Jumi, I cannot let you live! Die!"_

_ Blackpearl managed to twist just enough to avoid the full blow of the flung blade, feeling indescribable agony as the sharp edges ricocheted off the rounded surface of her core. She fell to the sand with the world rushing into her ears as splintered sounds. A stream of them shaped words in a voice she barely recognized as belonging to one of the youngsters that had just been promoted to his Knighthood, crying for Alex to not hurt a comrade. _

_ Footsteps pattered away on sand as arms gently caught her up, turning her to be cradled against bare skin beaded with sweat. "You are a Jumi, are you not!?" urged that same youthful voice. "Pull yourself together!" _

_ The need to help Florina, to protect her people, to find a replacement for her worn charge poured in with the rush of the world and resettled it all into a new shape as the light flooded in. The young man holding her made a noise of surprise when she blinked up at him; she wasn't sure why, since she wasn't sure what had just happened or why she was so dizzy._

_ He seemed like he was nice, though. So she tried to smile up at him while she asked where she was, and what Jumi were, and who he was. It was only polite to ask for the name of the person who helped you, right? And since she couldn't remember for herself, did he know who she was?_

_ He gave her a smile then, and she decided that she liked that smile. It was warm, and safe, and comforting. "You are Pearl. Don't worry! I am a Knight and I will protect you!"_

Blackpearl shifted uncomfortably as Florina sighed in understanding. "Pearl was born from your damaged core." Her own scarred core flickered sadly. "Damaged, you decided to shoulder my pain as Pearl."

Elazul was looking back and forth between the two, his expression telling anyone who cared to look that he wasn't sure if he should simply give up his Knighthood or dig his claws in for the duration. His Guardian, his most precious charge, and the Knight most well known amongst his people for being more than capable of taking care of herself, were one and the same?

Florina looked around at them all for a moment, tilted her head to one side in thought, then nodded. "I have decided," she told them firmly, and looked to her one-time Knight. "Please, Blackpearl, stop Alexandra, the one who betrayed the race."

"Not stop her, Florina, defeat her," Blackpearl corrected. "She is now our enemy."

Mask cracking, the Clarius pleaded with the grim-faced woman. "You mustn't...You mustn't hurt anyone. I...will heal her troubled heart. So please..."

"No..." But Rei could tell that Blackpearl's heart wasn't really in it. Even after all of that, some scrap of the old feelings remained within the Knight for her traitorous comrade.

"Blackpearl, please, you were my Knight." Florina made an abrupt noise, as of someone remembering something, and turned her gaze to Elazul, who straightened in pure reflex. "I have something to ask of you, too, Elazul...No matter what happens, you must not interfere."

He jerked at the request, words a verbal slap. "What are you saying!? I am a Knight!" Rei, who'd been standing on her own for the past few minutes, took one step back so that she was standing at his shoulder in silent support.

Neither Florina nor Blackpearl missed the gesture, though the Clarius attempted to explain to him why she wanted him to stay out of a fight he saw as rightfully his. "The Jumi will surely die out if Blackpearl loses this battle. But you don't think by the old rules. You have never killed. You have another purpose..."

"Don't tell me what to do!" snapped Elazul, no longer caring that this was the highest ranking member of their race. All he saw now was someone who would interfere with the duty he had cherished for decades, and he would not tolerate it. "I am Pearl's Knight! I will protect both Pearl and Blackpearl!"

Florina clutched at her chest, breath coming shorter as her core glimmered beneath her hands. "It's time," she gasped, reaching beneath her pillows and pulling out a crooked walking staff. She managed to toss it to Rei with a "Here, take this," before she collapsed across the silken duvet.

Blackpearl stretched out her hands...only to have Florina fade out before those hands reached her, frantic words etching themselves into the air. "We'll all die...Everyone...Stop..." One last call reached their ears, meant for the knife-fighter still standing in solid support by a disgruntled Jumi youth. _"Rei, take care of Elazul..."_

Elazul growled. "What is it with everyone? Underestimate me, will you?" he demanded of the empty air filling the space beneath the bed's canopy. "Pearl...is _my_ Guardian!"

"Oh, yes," Rei murmured to him alone, "and you take _such_ good care of yourself in pursuit of that task, Mr. I'll-Just-Head-To-Leires-With-A-Wounded-Core." That won her a dark look, shot sidelong from beneath a sand-colored hood. She blinked innocently back.

Clearing her throat, Blackpearl regained their attentions and gave her stubborn protector a gentle smile that transformed her whole face from stern to stunning. "A new age...A new beginning...You have a future," she told him softly.

Elazul stared at her. "Blackpearl..."

Her smile grew a little bigger, a little deeper. "I leave it all to you. Everything that is mine, and Pearl's..."

Rei squeaked as that spot in her soul reshifted, covering her face against a final flurry of dark-petaled flowers. She wobbled and steadied herself, propping her empty hand on her hip to level an irritated frown at the pretty, white-clad Jumi girl holding a hand to her head.

"Are you alright, Pearl?" Elazul wanted to know, stepping towards her with his hands outstretched.

Pearl took them and beamed up at him. "I just remembered, Elazul. You gave me my name. I'd been searching for one for so long..." When he just gazed down at her, troubled, she shook her head and gave his hands a squeeze. "Don't worry, Blackpearl and I are one in the same. You are my Knight."

And that was that. Elazul once again stated that he would protect her in either form, chiming his core with Pearl's to cement the promise. Rei knew that the subject would never be brought up again. Or at least, it wouldn't be for quite a long time. But, the Lazuli Knight admitted with a small, crooked smile, he did not want Pearl to go.

"I can fight," insisted Pearl stubbornly, crossing her arms over her chest. "Blackpearl's powers will be needed, too."

The two argued about it for several moments while Rei concentrated on studying the staff she'd been given. About four feet long, it was a straight shaft for roughly two-and-a-half of that. The rest was a secondary piece firmly attached by a ring just below where the hand naturally went to grasp it. The tops of both shaft pieces were crowned by a simple jewel in gold setting, making it a lovely piece of functional art.

"Rei," Elazul called, interrupting her thoughts, "could you decide for us? You were always nearby. We can trust you." He flicked his fingers at the Artifact she was holding. "Take one of us to the place the staff shows."

She blinked. Looked at the staff in her hands, then back up. "You...really trust me that much?"

"Of course we do, silly," Pearl answered brightly. "You've always done your best for us; did you think we never saw that?"

"I can never be sure with some people," Rei told her, mostly joking. She took a deep breath. Nodded. "Okay. Then I choose Elazul."

"Then let's go, to the place the staff shows," agreed the Knight, and strode for the summoning circle in the floor. Just before he vanished, he turned to smile at his Guardian. "Don't worry. I'm sure we'll be back by suppertime."

Pearl smiled, nodded, and waited until he had gone before she turned to Rei. "Why?"

The knife-fighter shrugged. "He's the one who feels like he has the most to prove, and quite frankly I don't trust him not to do something stupidly heroic. Besides," she added with a sharper version of her usual smile, "don't think I'm leaving you here to knit a sweater or something, kitten. I'm betting a week's worth of dinners at that bistro in Lumina that Sandra's going to come back here to find out who discovered her hiding place for Florina. And when she does, I want you and Blackpearl to give her the greeting she so richly deserves while we look for Florina."

It was oddly fitting, Rei decided as she stepped onto that golden circle in the floor, to see Blackpearl's smile of challenge on Pearl's face.

———

They only got as far as the oasis in Duma that day. Having started in the afternoon, it took them a few hours after Rei teleported them to the same spot where they had first met Kathinja, and neither fighter wanted to try to cross the desert at night. It was common practice, true, and half of the moons were full or close to it, but neither was in a mood to deal with the increased number of monsters that would be out once the air cooled down.

It had also been a very long time since Elazul had needed to seek out the abandoned city of his people, and he wasn't sure he would recognize or even be able to find some of the landmarks in the dim light. "How long do you think it's been?" Rei asked him as they settled into a rough sort of camp next to the oasis pool.

In the middle of preparing dinner, Elazul had to sit back and think about it for a minute. His lips moved as he calculated, until he confessed that he wasn't sure how long it had been. He and Pearl had been wandering for so many years that they'd blurred into one another. "But," he finished, "I know that we haven't been back for more than twenty years or so. Everyone left when Florina disappeared, since it just wasn't safe for us with Deathbringer sending his armies against us."

Rei scowled at the mention of the undead emperor. In all that mess with the dragons and the Mana stones, his thorough defeat had been one of the only things she had never regretted. "But no one's heard of that ass moving actual parts of his armies since the end of the War for the Mana Stones. That was over a century ago," she pointed out.

"I know. But we sometimes go back to see if anyone has returned or left a message."

"You mean Pearl spaces out and disappears on you, and that's where you find her," Rei guessed, rewarded by a deep frown.

After a moment, Elazul shook his head and gave her a rueful smile as he went back to making dinner. "It's worrisome, you know," he confided amidst the steady crunch of vegetables being sliced, "how well you've come to know us in so little time."

The knife-fighter shrugged and stoked their campfire's flames higher. "We've known each other for almost three years. Even if we haven't actually been around each other that long, the two of you write—sometimes," she added playfully. "I'd be a horrible friend if I didn't know stuff about you by now."

"Just don't forget that the bonds you forge between us chain you to our fate," he warned her, gaze uncharacteristically grim. "I asked you once to separate your path from ours, and I well remember how you felt about that so I won't ask again. But remember that you are one of the only friends I have, and I do not want to see you turn to stone for sake of us."

Rei tilted her head a little, listening to her hair-pipes chime, before she leaned over and pulled him into a one-armed hug, resting her cheek against his temple as her fingers caught in the shoulder fabric of his cloak. "I won't forget, and I won't turn to stone," she promised quietly. "We are going to find the city, get Florina back, and flatten Sandra once and for all. And then we're going to take Florina and go back to Pearl, and you and the girls and Xan and my apprentices and I are going to find some way to live happily ever after if I have to rebuild the cottage from scratch to do it. Deal?"

Breathing in the scent of good earth and spicy herbs, Elazul closed his eyes and sent out a silent prayer to Gnome and the Goddess. "Deal."

They stayed that way for several long, slow heartbeats before they pulled apart, Elazul to finish preparing their evening meal, Rei to collect enough firewood to keep their makeshift hearth burning for a few hours more.

———

Supper was finished and the two friends had agreed upon watches by the time the third moon was rising. Rei had banked the fire while Elazul settled into his bedroll, both of them glad that long-standing habits had ensured that they always had enough supplies for rough camping with them. Satisfied that the embers would keep until morning, the knife-fighter called over, "It's your turn for a story, 'Lazul."

"It's my turn for a what?" Half-buried in his covers, Elazul blinked at her in confusion from behind a curtain of his hair.

Rei sat back on her haunches and grinned. "A story. Last time we had a trip like this I told you about my family's history, remember? It's your turn."

"I'm not going to get any sleep until I do, am I?"

"Hmm, no, probably not." She just grinned when he scowled at her, unrepentant as always. And chuckled when he gave in, flopping onto his back with a groan.

"All right. What do you want to hear about?"

Rei did not gloat in her victory, but curled up on the cooling sand and rested her arms on her bent knees. "Tell me about keys of the heart."

Elazul sighed, hearing no alternative in the gentle command. "It isn't a happy tale," he tried, and was met by an all-too recognizable expression of stubborn determination in a set jaw and narrowed eyes. "All right, all right, if you're that set on hearing about it."

He was abruptly treated to something he had never seen before. Upon his agreement, she had reached into her nearby pack and had pulled out a thin, leather-bound journal and a writing-stick of pressed charcoal. He half-expected her to pull out a pair of wire-rim spectacles, but she only settled herself more comfortably on the sand and waited for him to begin.

"I am suddenly reminded of a certain hat-wearing sword-fighter," he told her dryly, and was rewarded with a gamine grin and a gesture for him to stop stalling and get started. He shrugged and settled back into the comfort of his blankets, tucking his hands behind his head and looking up at the stars. "Each stone has a melody that it sings for those with the ability to hear it," he began slowly. "Jumi cores are no different. They are as complex as the souls that sing them, rising and falling with the emotions of the Jumi themselves. And we are nothing more than variations on the song sung by the world itself.

"Long ago, our songs wove together in a brighter harmony than they do today. Than they would today," he amended with an understandable dose of bitterness, "if we were even at half the strength we were at in the days following the War of Eyes. Back then we still had the compassion that let us shed tears of life, and an abundance of Mana to work with.

"Pearl told you our _legends_ of how the Jumi began. Our _histories_ tell a different tale, of how skilled hands, clay, and a stone from the riverbed was enough to wake a Jumi to the world of mortals. Jadus, my teacher, once told me that it took a little more than that, but not very much more. Our cores shine brightly, he said, because each one holds a wish that was whispered to it before it was put in place." His mouth crooked into a wry, wistful smile at the memory. "I told him that I had never thought that a sarcastic old bastard like him could still speak of Faerie tales, and was promptly forced to run ten circuits of the lowest ring of the city. With weights."

Rei chuckled. "I see that the habit you have of speaking before thinking is a very old one indeed."

"I believe I hear a kettle talking," he shot back, one eyebrow crooked upwards. When she only shrugged and did not bother to deny it, he turned his gaze back up to the night sky. "In the days after the War of Eyes Guardians sorely outnumbered we Knights, though the two classes had only freshly been decided upon. Too many mages desired us still for the Mana in our cores and for the tears of healing that we could shed to bring the dying back to the battle-field, hale and whole once again and nevermind that we were carving our own lives away with every tear.

"So those Guardians left unpaired began to turn themselves into stone, often hiding amongst the wares of sculptors and collectors before they scattered the keys of their hearts to the four winds. It was every unpaired Knight's mission to seek out a Guardian of his own before crafting another of our class to seek in turn."

Elazul rose on one elbow and looked steadily at his best friend and companion. "Becoming stone is easy for a Jumi, no matter the race or class," he said bluntly. "We only return to the state we began in. It is the _keys_ which are difficult, for they are the pieces of our souls made tangible. There should not have been enough Mana left in the world for Diana to craft her keys for all that she was ranked Lucidia. The Mana of this Fa'Diel is too tattered and worn for such things to survive in the realms beyond dreams."

"That could be why Pearl and I found them in places where Geo's Mana was more concentrated," Rei offered, meeting his eyes squarely. "In a shop selling Elementally-charged instruments, in the Academy, on the terrace where Kathinja turned Gilbert into a cheap lawn ornament."

"...It could very well be," Elazul agreed, letting himself drop back down on his blankets. "But the keys themselves are what lead a Knight to a slumbering Guardian, no matter how far away that Guardian might be. Each key holds a layer of the core-song; the listener need only follow it to the other keys and they will in turn lead him or her to the one whose core resonates to that song. It had become nothing more than a formal rite of passage by the time I was granted my Knighthood, something old and dusty and to be foregone if the opportunity presented itself."

He paused, and murmured quietly to himself, "The irony, that I would give anything to see that rite carried out on the streets of the Bejeweled City even one more time."

"You aren't dead yet, Elazul," Rei told him with a healthy dose of tart sympathy, reminding him that her hearing was much sharper than he was used to. "That means there's still hope. It might be nothing more than a grain, but if the others down in Underworld haven't given up hope, then neither can you."

Blue eyes blinked. "The Underworld...? I thought I'd heard you say something like that after Diana, but..." He levered himself back up onto his elbow again, staring at her in a muddle of emotions that he knew could never be untangled. "Have you really...?"

She busied herself with putting away her journal so that she had an excuse not to look at him directly, and nodded. "Yeah. Esmeralda, Diana and the others...I've spoken to them down in the Underworld. They still have hope, Elazul, in all of us." She looked at him then, mouth set in determination. "I refuse to let them down."

He was left staring for a moment or two more before he drew himself back together and nodded. Without another word being spoken, he rolled himself up in his blankets and Rei got to her feet to walk the first circuit of her watch. Neither would get much sleep that night.

———

Rei tilted her head back, one hand keeping her hood in place as she looked up and up to try and spot the top of the wall. It had been easier when she wasn't standing near the foot of them as she was now, able to catch glimpses of the sun refracting off the massive, polished gems that rimmed the top. She was glad of the extra protection that the cloak provided against the desert sun; gladder still that Elazul had been carrying a spare again. He claimed it was because Pearl was always losing hers, but Rei wasn't certain how much of that was truth and how much of it was healthy nomad paranoia.

Punishing heat aside, Rei was glad of the cloak for another reason. It had provided another layer to shield her when a sandstorm had blown up just before dawn this morning. Elazul, with his years of experience in desert living, had spotted it as a dark cloud on the horizon and had hauled her, half-conscious and complaining, into the shelter of a tiny cave near the oasis.

Once they'd cleared away the resulting piles of sand from the canvas-blocked opening afterwards, Elazul had observed that they must have been on the edge of the storm while pointing out towards the heart of the desert. When Rei had blinked enough sleep and dust out of her eyes to see properly, she had followed that pointing finger to find that the dunes beyond the oasis had been utterly flattened.

Only the hardiest of cacti had remained standing—which meant some of the oldest, those which had had plenty of time to sink their taproots deep—and the first of a cairn of rocks just visible from where they'd been standing.

Rei had had plenty of time to bless the sandstorm for unburying the sign-posts of piled rocks. Sometime after she'd bedded down, the staff that Florina had given her had disappeared. She supposed she should be grateful it had lasted as long as it had; no other Artifact that had come into her possession had lasted for more than a couple of hours. In fact, the one that had lasted the longest besides the staff was the set of children's blocks that her Sproutling had given her.

She sighed and brought her gaze from the dizzying heights back down to earth, turning to slog through soft sand in the same direction she'd seen Elazul go just a couple minutes earlier. He had mentioned something about finding the gate to the city's curtain wall and had vanished around the curve while she'd been sightseeing.

He hadn't gone very far; waiting just out of sight in front of a truly massive set of double-doors made of stone and some sort of metal amalgamation. He gave her a half-smile and ran his fingers over a couple of gems set into the rock, showing her the hair-fine scratches that marred their dusty surfaces. "It appears that the sandstorm did us another good turn. These marks are fresh and far fewer than they'd be if the gates had remained unburied all of these years."

She examined the abstract patterns of metal bracings and jewels that sparkled beneath their aged coats of dust and grit. "So the walls were partially buried? Did you see them when you came here?"

"Not really. I was always more concerned with finding my stray Guardian than in seeing just how far the home of my people had fallen." He smoothed his hand against the warm stone and grimaced, sinking his fingers into a slight depression that had been filled with sand and scooping it clear.

Light glinted off something in its heart.

"My life is full of irony," Elazul told her wryly, flexing the fingers of the hand covered in the crystal glove before he flattened his palm against the back of the depression. Rei blinked when his arm was 'swallowed' up to the elbow by what had seemed to be a hollow barely a handspan deep. "I was given one of the keys we made for this lock because I was half of a pair that was constantly wandering. The one time I use it is when the city is dead."

After a moment though, he frowned. "Odd. The door shouldn't still be locked. I have a key-glove, so why isn't it opening?"

Rei tugged him away from the lock; Elazul stepped away willingly, face still creased in puzzlement. When the knife-fighter peered down the lock-recess, she found a hand-sized piece of some sort of crystal shining from the back. Stretching, she brushed her own fingertips against the polished surface and concentrated hard.

Mana whispered against her touch, distinctive, lonesome. A pattern she knew perfectly well, since the staff she'd held until this morning had practically yelled the same song in her metaphysical ear every time it was in her hands.

Leaving the crystal alone for the moment, she turned back to Elazul and checked the glove that covered his arm from fingertips to shoulder, finding that while the patterns were nearly identical, the glove had an element that the lock did not. Quirking her lips into a wry smile, she told him, "It's spent too long in your company, 'Lazul. Some of that stubbornness has rubbed off on it."

He frowned. "So what are we going to do, then? The staff was our guide, and possibly the proper key. If we have no staff and my glove doesn't work, how are we to get in?"

Rei thought for a moment before she reached around and dug into her pack. Pulling out her writing stick, she quickly brushed away the dust around the lock and began scribbling. Elazul watched as sigils bloomed around the lock-hole, elegant and flowing. She added a last one with a flourish and promptly spun, grabbing his crystal-shrouded arm and doing the same to it.

"I was under the impression that charcoal doesn't write on polished surfaces," the Jumi Knight remarked while the sigils that circled the lock began twining from his wrist towards his elbow.

"Normally you'd be right," Rei answered, eyes on her work and voice distracted. "But I'm enforcing the Mana-sigils with some of my own energy to help the patterns adjust and to make the charcoal stick. There. Try it now."

Looking rather dubious, Elazul once against flattened his gauntleted palm against the hidden crystal. At the same time, Rei touched both sets of sigils and _hummed_.

His core responded to the sudden, unexpected touch of Mana and sang out, the energy rippling from his chest to his shoulder and down his arm. A soft blue glow shivered out from his hand into the stone beneath, making the whole thing light up as golden energy raced through the sigils on the door and out, inset jewels glittering as the energy passed through.

Deep within stone, something clicked.

The two companions backed up at the tremendous groan that marked the double-doors opening, Rei grinning, Elazul astounded. The knife-fighter caught his amazed stare and lifted her hands in a shrug. "I specialize in craftings and wards, remember? Matching harmonies between objects originally attuned to each other is pretty simple."

The Lazuli Knight only shook his head and led the way into the city. He decided that he would not bother explaining that it had taken a round dozen of the mages allied with the Jumi to create the seals embedded in the main gates and keys like the one he wore, nor that such had stood against everything that Deathbringer could throw at them. It would take too much energy, as would asking her if she would consider collapsing a mage-tower like Leires as 'simple'.

Because quite frankly, what she had just done was easily on par with doing just that.

———

Rei had enough warning from the lock to brace herself when she stepped beyond the threshold of the gate. She had been to a lot of places where people had used to live; the forested ruins in Rosiotti's Jungle, the shattered structures of Mindas, Leires, Jajara's Bone Fortress. All of them had carried a sense of desolation, some a sense of Mana twisted horribly awry. Some had simply _been, _the peoples that had dwelled in such places so long gone that the ruins themselves had forgotten what it had been like to be lived in.

The Bejeweled City _remembered_. The very heart of it thrummed beneath Rei's feet, full of the bustle of market day, of the laughter of children playing in the streets. Knights training to protect the people they cared about. Arguments, laughter, joy and tears. This place knew all of these things, and missed them badly. Domina was a contented tortoiseshell cat curled amongst green quilts; the Bejeweled City was a mother calling for the return of the children she had lost.

Rei had to blink hard to keep back the tears that threatened to spill.

Elazul was lost in his own thoughts or he would have noticed immediately, far too attuned to her normally for the knife-fighter to always be comfortable with. He had taken a few steps ahead of her, gaze bouncing from streets cobbled with a mix of plain brown stone and gems, to the buildings rising for sky. "The Bejeweled City," he murmured to himself, memories painting in shades of the past in their day-to-day lives. "The world that Blackpearl tried to protect..."

Whether in remembrance or tribute, the flash of his core had the added effect of clearing Rei's head of the emotional residue of the city itself and she was able to regain her own composure. To hide the fact that she'd nearly cried, the knife-fighter took a good look around for herself, realizing for the first time _why_ this place was called the 'Bejeweled City'.

Because it _was_. Nearly every surface—street, buildings, even the channels carrying a shocking amount of water down from the higher tiers—had some measure of gemstones embedded in the honey-brown stone that shaped the entire city. Yellows, oranges, red and purples shone from amongst the edges of the cobblestone road, many of the crystalline pieces quite as big as Rei or even Elazul. Head-sized pieces of green studded the aqueduct channels; pinks and purples glittered from the walls.

The two began walking at the same time, falling into subconscious step with each other as they kept within arm's reach. They passed a large structure whose door was sealed off by more stone, both a door and a bar locking it shut against them. "Was this place always known just as the Bejeweled City?" Rei asked the Knight walking slowly beside her.

He glanced over and shook his head. "That's just the name that the other races gave it. In the old language of my people, this place was once called 'Etansel'. Meant the same thing, almost. Pearl told me that," he added thoughtfully.

They walked in comfortable silence after that, Rei noting that the farther they went, the more cobblestone was replaced with gemstone. She was wondering just often people had slipped on these streets when they came to a door crowned with a softly-glowing crimson jewel. Elazul nodded as though in confirmation of an old memory and headed for it with determined steps. "Come on," he called over his shoulder. "This is something I want you to see."

Rei obligingly followed, only to duck the moment she'd crossed the threshold to avoid having an arrow find her skull. The Chobin Hood who'd fired the ill-timed arrow hissed and fitted another to his string, another Chobin Hood doing to the same for a dismayed Elazul. Rei unsheathed her knives and sprang forward, tucking herself into a rolling dive and coming up so close that the rodent was unable to use his bow effectively. A few slices and he was gone; a Shadow that had been hiding behind the pair of archers was quickly taken care of the same way.

She looked over to find that Elazul was already sheathing his sword with a troubled frown. "The gates were still sealed. How did monsters find their way in?"

The knife-fighter had no idea and told him so before adding, "So what did you want me to see?"

He brightened and gestured for her to look, actually _look_, at the room they were in. The light in here was warm and welcoming, especially now that the monsters had been cleared from it, and shone off the double-pyramid crystal that was floating above a pedestal at the other end of the room.

Bright crimson like the jewel crowning the door, its warmth reflected on the wall behind it and sent bangles of color floating on the surface of the tub-sized pool sheltered behind it.

"Wow," breathed Rei in amazement. Everything was centered around that floating jewel, with practically every surface in the room polished to a glossy finish. Especially the two wings of stone rising on either side of the pedestal, carved to mimic cresting waves in profile.

"Stonework was the pride of my people," Elazul said, sounding almost content as he went over and picked up the floating jewel. "We were masters of it. Every room that contains the keys to Sappho's Gates looks like this."

"Sappho's Gates?" Rei echoed, accepting the jewel when he handed it to her. Warm from the sunlight, the ruby sat in her hands as a comfortable weight.

"One of our older Guardians. He was a master even amongst our craftsmen, and built the staircases the gates that protected them between every tier of the city. He even designed and helped build the main gates that shelter the city itself." He inclined his head towards the ruby she was examining. "The ones inside the city are all opened with jewels like that one."

Tucking it away in her pack, Rei gave him a wry version of her usual smile. "Then I suppose we'd better look for the rest."

———

Ruby, emerald, topaz and sapphire. The four keys were heavy in the pack of the green-eyed sprite as she and the blue-eyed Knight approached the first of Sappho's Gates. They'd passed it once already, but Elazul had said that they had needed to collect the rest of the keys before they attempted the Gate, and so they'd left it behind.

Now Elazul was frowning at the sealed doors, running fingertips across his core uneasily. "Rei, this looks like some sort of trap..."

She'd heard that line once before in a place vastly different from this, but the warning was the same. And Rei had no intention of finding out if Etansel had a basement, thank you very much. She halted on the steps to the raised platform that supported the Gate's threshold, eyeing the doors in turn. "What kind of trap? The falling kind of trap, or the ambush kind of trap?"

A moment of concentration before his eyes narrowed. "An ambush kind of trap. Something lurks within..." His core flashed and he reacted, yanking her to the side as something bright and glittery dropped to the ground from the top of the Gate and rolled towards them.

Rei knew that shape entirely too well for comfort. "A Jewel Beast!"

They skidded to a halt when the summoning gem _bounced_, arcing above them to smash on the stones ahead of their flight. Amidst the brilliant light of its conjuration, the aquamarine Jewel Beast hissed its rage at the intruders and charged on its four spindly legs.

Out came Ishe platinum knives; out came the lazuli-and-Vizel gold scimitar. _Snicker-snack_ went the blades, and down went the Jewel Beast.

Rei huffed and wiped the dust on her blades off on her skirt before she sheathed them. "Two years and more I've had to deal with that woman," she growled, "and not _once_ has she come up with a new trick."

Elazul paused in the cleaning of his own weapon and looked over at her with another troubled frown. "Two years?"

"I had an encounter with her not long after I escorted Pearl through Leires," she admitted at last. "I was in Polpota Harbor when she stole a Jumi core from a guy called Basket Fish. She was disguised as an Imperial soldier's ghost at the time; the idiot fish freaked out, gave it to her when she demanded it, and she ran off. She called it the 'Blue Eye'."

"So you find her even when you aren't with us," Elazul remarked as the two made their way back to the Gate.

"Oh, yeah. I even find her in places besides reality." Looking at the two cup-shaped pedestals on either side of the double-doors, she raised an eyebrow at Elazul. "Which ones do we use?"

"Rei, I haven't been _inside_ the city for over a hundred years," he reminded her dryly, "and when I was, these Gates were never closed. How should I know?"

"Lots of help you are," she grumbled at him, and picked a random key.

She pestered him to backtrack even after they'd unlocked the stairway to the next tier, Rei prompting him to think about the odds of them needing the emerald or sapphire again, and did he really want to backtrack that far once they were up the stairs?

He conceded and back they went. But Elazul wasn't finished with their interrupted conversation. "Places besides reality?" he repeated once they'd retrieved a second set of the keys they'd used. "Like what?"

"Like Florina's dreams." Rei sighed. "That's how I met her, you know. I went to visit Alex yesterday to talk to him, and got pulled into Pandora's Box where he'd been keeping her. Yes, _Alex_," she repeated before Elazul had a chance to let out the squawk she knew he had coming. "That was bad enough. When Belle the witch came along to complain about the nightmares Florina had been having, I ended up dealing with _two_ Niccolos when I volunteered to go into the dreamworld to take care of the nightmare-bugs."

Elazul winced and patted her shoulder in sympathy.

"That was how I guessed about Pearl and Blackpearl being one and the same, you know," Rei continued, accepting the sympathy with good grace. "You know how in dreams, there are things you 'know' without actually seeing them?" He nodded. "In Florina's dreams I saw those two split and merge and switch twice in your dream-self's presence, and I know they did it a third time when they were with the dream version of Sandra." She paused, remembering the rest of it, and growled. "I had to fight another Jewel Beast by myself, by the way. Why do they keep making me do that?"

"Because you keep finding trouble when I'm not around to haul you out of it," he answered, and that was that. They headed up the stairs to the second tier in companionable silence, and resumed the task of searching for the keys to the rest of Sappho's Gates. It lingered until they reached the ruins of a once-lovely courtyard that still held a small arch and three large pedestal-jewels that were twice the height of either fighter, which looked like they'd once been buried by the earth still piled around their bases.

Three shades stood on the podiums: a blue-haired young woman that looked uncannily like Esmeralda stood on the green, Diana stood on the white, and Rubens stood on the crimson. The two fighters caught their breaths and stood utterly still to watch the scene play out.

_"How is Florina doing, Rubens?" _asked the shade of the Esmeralda-look-alike. _"She seems to be so tired."_

_ "What about a new Knight for Florina?" _Rubens asked of Diana, who merely smiled indulgently and folded her hands in front of her.

_"No need to worry,"_ she assured her fellow reflections._ "Think of Alexandra as a substitute for Blackpearl."_

Another shade appeared at the base of the green pedestal, this one a red version of Esmeralda with worry clear even from where the two fighters stood. _"Diana!"_

_ "What is the matter?"_ asked the Lucidia Guardian, smile slipping away.

_"Florina is not in her chamber!"_ The cores of the gathered Jumi flashed, dark in this illusion instead of the bright color the two were so familiar with, and the four faded from view.

Elazul took a step forward, fists clenching until the material of his gauntlet squeaked a complaint. "An illusion...of when everyone was still alive."

Rei came up and placed a hand on his shoulder, still looking towards the emerald pedestal. "So those were two of 'Melda's sisters," she observed quietly. "Come on. We still need to find the other keys on this level."

Wordlessly, Elazul followed after.

Ruby, topaz and aquamarine unlocked the second Gate after they'd dealt with another Jewel Beast lying in ambush behind the doors, and once again the pair backtracked to recollect the jewels they'd used. Rei wasn't taking any chances of going all the way up and discovering that they lacked the necessary key. It also gave her a chance to steady her growing nerves by clearing out some of the infestations of monsters, which were only getting stronger the higher up they went.

The city had one more surprise for them on the level that Elazul said was mostly occupied by the Lucidia. It wasn't very big, especially compared to the lowest level—they found a Gate before they even found a key. And they found more shades in another time-worn courtyard that mostly held water and tasteful arrangements of reddish jewels amidst the cobbles. At the foot of two short flights of stairs, the shades of Esmeralda's sisters had arranged themselves, looking up at Rubens' shade on the first landing above them.

_"The city cannot stand without the tears of Florina," _the Knight's reflection told the three gathered below. _"She must be brought back."_

_ "We shall bring her back,"_ stated the blue-haired shade.

_"No. You three sisters have yet to be Knighted."_

_ "That is true, but..."_ the red-haired shade began, and was interrupted by Rubens.

_"I shall ask Lady Blackpearl."_

The third female shade had hair the color of saffron, and she crossed her arms in front of her chest. _"Lady Blackpearl has been expelled from the city."_

_"Officially, yes..."_ Rubens' shade told the three with a lot more patience than Rei remembered him having. _"Lady Blackpearl is looking for the Mana Stone by Florina's order."_

The sisters shared a look amongst themselves before Blue spoke again. _"We did not know. Where _is_ Lady Blackpearl?"_

_ "Probably Leires. She said there was a powerful sword there. I'll go to the tower. Take care of Diana."_

The trio saluted. _"Yes."_

That was when Esmeralda's shade appeared behind her sisters, and Rei's hand sought out Elazul's. The knife-fighter stood there with her chin held high and her eyes clear as the bright-faced girl that she'd helped to take care of grinned at the shades of her sisters and asked, _"Going somewhere? Are you going outside?"_

_ "We are not going on vacation," _scolded Yellow, propping her hands on her hips.

Wilting a bit, Esmeralda's shade quickly bounced back. _"Oh...Are you headed to Geo, too?"_

Red shivered. _"That is a scary place."_

_ "The shop that sells our cores is there," _Blue added.

_ "But the academy is there too, right?" _the cheerful green-haired shade grinned. _"I really want to learn magic."_

_"Yes, yes."_ The three older sisters ruffled their younger fourth's hair affectionately and turned back to their commander. _"Farewell, Rubens. We are off," _they chorused, and vanished from sight with a flash of their cores, leaving a pouting Esmeralda alone with Rubens.

Smiling, Rubens questioned the unhappy emerald Jumi. _"Why would Esmeralda want to learn magic?"_

_ "I'm a Guardian, but I can't cry,"_ explained the Jumi girl, grinning and raising her fists in enthusiasm. _"That's why I want to be a Knight like Lady Blackpearl."_

_ "I see...You are a good girl, Esmeralda."_ Their cores flickered, and then they too, faded from sight.

Elazul let out a soft curse, his core once again chiming in answer to the reflections still playing out scenes that had happened a century ago and more. He stalked onwards, Rei lingering behind long enough to sketch out a brief prayer to those souls that Sandra had betrayed. Lump of sorrow firmly shoved down into her stomach where it could do nothing more than ache, she hurried after her friend.

———

As they walked up the final set of stairs that led to the top of the city, Rei asked Elazul why the Jumi would craft rooms for keys that were not needed for Sappho's Gates. It had taken an amethyst, aquamarine, emerald, and a sapphire to unlock the third and last Gate; the diamond that they'd wrested from a rather formidable golem had not even been required. Elazul in turn had answered that they _had_ occasionally switched around the combinations in order to confuse any intruders.

The irony that it had done nothing but delay the city's defenders had been left unspoken, sour on the back of their tongues.

Despite it all, Rei still caught her breath in awe when they had mounted the top of the stairs and stood before the highest room in Etansel. The view around them was incredible: the entirety of the city stretched out below them with a panoramic view of the desert beyond, so clear that it felt like it stretched on forever. _A scrap of pleasure to the one who carves their life away for their race,_ murmured a quiet voice in the back of her mind, that part of her that had grown scarred from her experiences in the past three years.

Pleasure in the scenery dampened, the knife-fighter turned back to her companion. Elazul had been studying the generous upside-down bulb that had housed his people's hope for so many years, and now took no pride or comfort in what it meant. He too, could only see it as a prison...

"So," he said gruffly, "this is the Chamber of the Clarius?"

Rei opened her mouth to answer when Florina's voice rang out, muffled from being behind closed doors. "Someone! Our sparkle will go out!"

Elazul let out a cry and charged forward, Knight instincts once again blinding him to the dangers he rushed into headlong. But Rei didn't mind anymore. She was here this time, and she would make sure that nothing happened to him. So she got into trouble when he wasn't around to pull her out? _At least cats always land on their feet,_ she reminded herself as they plunged into a room choked in shadows.

Green eyes raked over the scene inside: Florina collapsed across a round cushioned throne set in the middle of the far wall, sheltered beneath a canopy of silk that had either been recently replaced or had survived the passage of time exceedingly well. She did not appear to be conscious at all, and faint flickers of light sparked from her damaged core.

Sandra stood tall and proud at the foot of the throne, a fist braced easily on one out-slung hip with the light from the weak crystal lamps casting a peculiar glow across her face. Rei decided on the instant that pink was most certainly not the red-head's color and that whoever had decorated this place should have chosen more neutral colors for the lighting.

Concurrent was the thought that Sandra had nowhere to run this time, and Rei was going to take a deep and visceral pleasure in wiping that arrogant smirk off those glossed lips.

Said lips curved deeper at the sight of them. "You're finally here."

Elazul bristled, just as Rei had known he would. "Sandra!? _You_ were Alexandra?"

"That's right." The hunter crossed her arms beneath her chest and _tsk_ed disapprovingly. "It took you this long to figure it out? That yellow terrier behind you wasn't half that slow."

"All I had were guesses, Sandra," Rei told her evenly, making sure her feet were spread wide. "I wasn't sure until that first Beast down below."

Elazul stalked forward and let his core ring out aggressively. Although she'd more than half-expected it, the answering, almost simultaneous chime from beneath the high-necked dress that Sandra wore nearly made Rei jump as the two Jumi squared off. "What are you trying to do, hunting the Jumi?" he demanded, every word harsh with anger. "Is it revenge?"

"That, too," the hunter agreed easily. "But that is not all. Let me show you."

Taking that as his proper cue, light blazed up on one of the two flanking pedestals, revealing the aquatic sprite that had teleported Rei and Elazul out of the Mekiv caverns when the Knight had been wounded near death.

Rei wasn't the only one who recognized him. For all that he'd been barely conscious (if at all) at the time, evidently this man had managed to leave enough of an impression when Rei had spoken to him. "You were at the cave!" the Knight shouted, pointing an accusatory finger at the raggedly-dressed male.

Executing a deep bow, the stranger introduced himself at last. "I am the Lord of Jewels."

"My master has the power of a black hole," Sandra declared proudly. "To fuse together everything that is swallowed."

And that officially put the Lord of Jewels on Rei's short list of people to bring down as fast as possible. In bold, underlined print, beneath the top name that had already been crossed-out—Drakonis—and above Irwin's, which had likewise struck from the record. Anyone who ate a sentient being to gain power of one kind or another was the kind that needed to be laid low, by any means necessary.

Elazul had similar feelings as he stared, sickened, at the serene man standing hunched and far too close to his people's Clarius. "You ate the Jumi cores...?" he asked in a voice barely louder than a whisper.

"Everything becomes one inside me," the Lord of Jewels explained in the resonant tones of a priest. "I will retrieve your cores, and the light of the stars in space."

Sandra shifted her weight into a more balanced stance, as though she sensed the tension practically vibrating down Rei's spine, and spoke again. "My master has already swallowed nine-hundred and ninety-eight cores. It takes a thousand to save Florina."

"So you doomed an entire race to save one person?" Rei's words echoed off the ceiling of the chamber, sharp and harsh compared to the poisoned honey pouring off the tongues of Sandra and her master. "Idiot. In case you hadn't noticed or bothered to read your history books, it's supposed to be the other way around."

"Be silent!" Sandra hissed. "What would _you_ know!? Whose life have you valued so much to sacrifice for!?"

Rei looked back steadily and answered. "The innocent ones. My apprentices, my brother, my friends. You just haven't pushed hard enough yet."

"Well, then," Sandra snarled, "we will see if the loss of your precious knight changes the way you think! There are two cores left for my master to swallow, and one of them stands not three feet from you."

"So the nine-hundredth ninety-ninth core is..." Without so much as a flourish, the Lord of Jewels brought a Jumi core from one of his coat's pockets, a core that gleamed white one moment and black the next, and tilted his head back. Pearl's core dropped down his throat with scarcely a whisper.

"Pearl!" Elazul's wail cut into Rei's heart and set her eyes to burning as she brought her gaze to the smug jewel hunter standing only a couple of yards away.

When she spoke, it was barely louder than a murmur. "Escad learned to his sorrow, as did Irwin, Drakonis and Deathbringer, why you do not endanger one of mine. May you savor the lesson you are about to learn."

Sandra's master brought her attention back to him a heartbeat later when he told Elazul, "Do not be saddened, for all the Jumi shall become one." And thus, she missed the shaken expression that had replaced the arrogant smirk on glossed lips.

"You demon!" the Knight shouted. "How could you do such a thing to her!" His anger turned to pain at the explosion of light that centered around the Lord Of Jewels, Rei reaching out blind and grabbing onto Elazul's cloak to pull him into arm's reach. Illusions of beautiful opal stones spun around them for several long heartbeats as Mana tugged and pulled at Rei's senses, nearly overbalancing her into the arms of the green-haired Knight before everything settled.

Movement shifted on her right and Rei struck, confident in the knowledge that Elazul was on her left and Florina unconscious on the throne well beyond her immediate reach. Everyone else in the room had been labeled 'target' the moment the knife-fighter had stepped beyond the doors.

Her knife bounced off something hard and slick, a melodious snarl reaching her ears half a second later. She blinked her eyes clear at last and felt her eyebrows go shooting upwards at the sight of what Sandra's master had become.

He was..._cute_. More than any other greater monster that she'd fought, bar none. It was almost as if some Power had taken Vadise, shrunk her, and dyed her fur twilight purple, shortening the graceful neck and giving her furry wings instead. The long tail was there and tipped in a forked curl of emerald green, the graceful claws were wrapped around a perch of a giant, round blue stone, and instead of a single pair of eyes, four almonds of deep aquamarine blue were slitted in poor temper around a pink—_pink!—_forehead gem. Blue crystal ridges sprouted from the shoulder-blades and ran down out of sight between the furry wings, complimenting the nubby amber horns that fanned around the rabbit-like head.

If she hadn't been aware of just how much looks could deceive, Rei might have made herself sick laughing. As it was, she had enough time to see the deep gash she'd left in the blue stone before she was rolling into a dodge, Sandra temporarily forgotten since the hunter was not in immediate sight.

Elazul rolled with her, curses barely reaching her ears as he rubbed at eyes that still watered. She grabbed him by the shoulder and shoved him back, nimbly stepping aside to avoid a translucent gem-shape that had been flung out by aforementioned long forked tail.

A moment later she was glad she had, since the light that bounced from that gem to the handful of others that had been scattered to refract out looked like it would have stung like hell. Then she was avoiding a tail-strike, spinning to loose an attack of her own that scarred the jewel further and took chunks out of the gold setting that kept the whole thing floating several inches off the ground.

Elazul darted in on the other side, taking advantage of the beast's distraction to put his sword to painful use. A high-pitched scream deafened them to everything else when his sword left deep gashes on tail and hind-quarters. When the sharp fangs turned to snap for him, Rei leapt and sank her blades into the soft spot just above the base of a wing, accepting the buffet that sent her flying across the room as a reasonable cost for such a risky move.

Her companion screamed when one of the jewel-attacks hit. Rei dove in without another thought, putting herself between the dazed Elazul and whatever attack was next; she kept up a barrage of horizontal slashes that ripped the air and drove the dragon-kin back. Ten breaths and Elazul was up again, recovered from the concussion of grenade-like shards that had detonated nearly under his feet.

Then it was his turn to turn offense to defense when a concentrated beam of light from that huge blue stone caught up the golden-haired sprite and flung her once again into the air, encasing her in a thin shell of opal that shattered when it and she struck the floor. She could only kneel, knuckles of one hand braced against the floor as she tried to shake off the disorientation that was the result of her landing. Everything from shoulder to hip ached from the unforgiving impact, but thankfully she'd managed to save her skull. _Okay. So maybe this cat doesn't always land on her feet..._

"Get _up_, woman!" Elazul roared as he ducked another whistling strike of the tail. "This is no time to be lazy!"

"I'll bloody well show _you_ lazy," Rei growled, getting back up onto her feet and jumping back into the fight.

Rei wasn't certain how long the fight lasted before the dragon-kin vanished from beneath her blades in another burst of lights, the Lord of Jewels appearing back on the pedestal where he had first showed himself. Pale and sweaty, he clutched at his chest as he gasped for air.

"I only need a little more strength," the sprite panted.

And without hesitation, Sandra wrapped her fingers around the stone in her chest and called, "Master, take my core."

Rei's head snapped around and she stared, incredulous, as the jewel hunter vanished in a swirl of golden lights, leaving only her core hovering in the air as it glowed a brilliant green. Elazul let out a noise of shock as the Lord of Jewels breathed Sandra's name and stretched out a trembling hand for the blazing stone.

Sandra's voice was faint, but very much there as she pleaded for her master to win and shed tears for Florina.

"Blight and bane," Rei swore softly to herself as the core floated through the air to the Lord of Jewels, engulfing him in a bigger flare of light than ever before.

Looking back on that fight, the knife-fighter would never be able to fully recall the details of that struggle or the enemy that she and Elazul battled against. She could only describe it when asked as a kind of whale-kin crossed with one of those Faerie-tale air-ships, complete with a figure-head. There was a lot of green, some purple, and several light-based attacks that, quite frankly, she really didn't _want_ to remember.

The scars they would leave would ache enough without the memories.

But that was in the future, and in the now, Rei checked her grip on her knives and shared one last look with Elazul before she plunged into a battle that made the fight with Irwin look like a stroll along Madora.

———

Rei stood in the Chamber of the Clarius, high atop the rest of the Jumi's Bejeweled City, bruised and bloody in flesh and soul. Elazul stood just a few feet away, as breathless and heartsore as she, gazing blankly at the stone wall behind her. Florina, the lone Clarius, sat in numb silence in the padded alcove that served for a throne.

They had won against the Lord of Jewels, and it was a bitter victory.

"Florina and I are all that is left of the Jumi," rasped Elazul, voice soft. Rei had no doubt that the Knight was still in shock after what had happened. The Lord of Jewels, who had helped her bring Elazul to her home after he'd been wounded, had been on the side of the devils in the end. He'd swallowed nine-hundred ninety-eight Jumi cores, each delivered to him by the jewel hunter Sandra—and then he'd eaten another core before their very eyes, one that gleamed white and black in turn.

_Pearl…_ Rei bowed her head, sorrow clamping down on her heart. After the Lord of Jewels had eaten Pearl's core he'd transformed from a hunchbacked, elderly, aquatic-type man to a kin of dragons with a number of jewel-based attacks that had hurt like goddamned hell at his clawtips.

Elazul and Rei, they'd beaten him. And then Sandra, who hadn't shown a single self-sacrificial bone in her body before now, had given her master her core—sacrificing two Jumi in the stead of one, for kind male Alex the jeweler and fierce female Sandra the hunter had been one in the same.

Then the two fighters had had to battle the Lord again in the shape of a whale-kin with even nastier attacks up his sleeve, coming out alive but weary beyond all telling.

_I failed them,_ echoed around in Rei's head as grief formed a lump in her throat that refused to be swallowed. _Pearl, Esmeralda, Rubens, Diana…I failed them all. What kind of hero can I be, if I fail so many people?_ She raised her head to say—well, she didn't exactly know what she'd say to one of the two last people of an entire race—but nothing came out of her mouth.

Instead, two hot tears slid their way down her cheeks even as Elazul's eyes widened in horror.

"Stop, now!" he cried, fear turning his skin ashen. "If you cry for one of us you'll turn to—" The tears fell, merging into a glittering teardrop-shaped crystal that sang as it struck the floor. "—stone," the Jumi Knight finished in a whisper, watching gray climb up his friend's body. The grieving, lost expression was still on Rei's face, permanent now in the polished marble mask that her face had become.

Elazul's world spun, voices filling the horrible silence that Rei had left behind. He heard a dozen familiar voices exclaiming over their sudden appearance, a few wanting to know why Olbohn had changed the look of the Underworld without any warning. One male voice rose above the rest, getting others to realize that they weren't _in_ Underworld, they were _alive_, as Elazul himself whispered, "It's a miracle."

A small, soft hand tugged on his sleeve, and he looked down into the wondering, ecstatic face of his precious Pearl. "Elazul!" she cried giddily, "Look!" And then _she_ looked, looked towards the side of the room that had gone unnoticed before. Her next cry was one of pain as she took in the statue who wore her sprite friend's face. "Oh, Rei…"

Elazul barely heard her; he didn't hear Florina saying something about one person's caring for all others being what forged a teardrop crystal in a voice that shook in awe.

———

Olbohn, one of Fa'Diel's Seven Wisdoms and the caretaker of the Underworld, tapped his foot on empty air as his three eyes regarded the sprite girl panting in a corner of the room farthest from his study. It had taken her only a few moments to check every single room in the corridor to find all the Jumi that had been here on her last visit were gone, and frankly, he wasn't surprised that she was taking in air as a reflex even though she was newly dead. Functions of a living body took time to be forgotten; breathing was usually the last to go. And that was a lot of corridor she'd just sprinted through.

His foot stilling itself as he drifted down to the ground, Olbohn crossed a pair of his arms and frowned at the girl who'd eschewed stone chairs and bed for the cold comfort of stone floor. "I would have preferred the pearl girl and the others to you, I think," he grumbled at her. "They never gave me near as much trouble as you on your…infrequent visits."

Rei lifted her head from her knees and gave the Wisdom a shadow of her usual headstrong smile. "Well I for one prefer this arrangement," she replied in a voice thick with tears. "Elazul was going to skin me whenever he came out of shock for ever letting anything happen to Pearl. Can't find me here."

"Hmph. Brash as ever."

Rei's brief laugh was a shattered blade scattered across the floor. "Right. That's me. Go away and let me be brash in peace, Wisdom Olbohn."

The Wisdom opened his mouth to say something, then thought better of it when he caught the full scope of the smile Rei was still shielding her tears with—it was somehow haunted, pained, and jubilant, all at once. It told him that she knew exactly what she'd done, and was fully prepared to take responsibility for reviving a race of people that others had fought wars over.

So instead of replying, he merely gave her a slight bow and walked—_walked_—out of the cavelet back to his office. Rei let her head roll back until rock pillowed it, the unpolished surface catching at strands of hair, and finally let the tears she'd been holding back since Gato Grottoes fall. It wasn't like she could die again, after all. The dead don't turn to stone.

Armored feet made a belling clank against stone floor and thunked across a wooden bridge, a wolf-kin in red armor coming to stand in her room's door with his long jaw agape. "Rei, they're all gone," he rumbled in shock, jerking a thumb back the way he'd come. "_What did you do?_"

Rei gave another of those shattered laughs and turned that smile of hers to Larc the dragoon. But unlike Olbohn, it did not send him away. Instead, for no reason that she could understand, it brought him to her side, where he slid down the wall in a protesting screech of armor to pull her gently into a one-armed hug.

Shattered laughter turned to hiccuping sobs, Rei leaning her head against a shoulder comfortingly protected in metal. Metal was good, it was cool on her face, and it meant that the one wearing it wasn't going to just go and die on her. Everyone who'd died hadn't been wearing a scrap of armor worth the name. Around her tears Rei managed to answer her friend's question. "I f-failed ev-everyone. Ev-ev-en P-Pearl. And I just c-couldn't s-stop the tears fr-from falling. Oh, L-Larc. I _failed them all._"

"Somehow, little wildcat," the wolf-kin rumbled back, tilting his head to rest a furry cheek against the top of her head, "I don't think they'll see it that way."

———

The Jumi stood gathered around the statue that was their people's savior, the ones standing closest the ones that Rei had met in her travels across the entirety of Fa'Diel. Pearl and Elazul. Rubens and Diana. Esmeralda and her three sisters, the latter having only been in the warrior's company as three bespelled cores. A blue-tinted man who had introduced himself as Sappho, builder of the City's gates and the one that had been called the 'Blue Eye' when he'd been reduced, like Esmeralda's sisters, to only his core. Florina stayed seated on the edge of the padded hollow of the Clarius Throne, too emotionally exhausted to move even though her own damaged core had been restored along with her people.

Elazul stood closest, gazing into the grief-filled face of Rei's statue, drifting in his shock until memory had become more real than the slate floor beneath his feet.

A blond stranger wearing a strange set of pipes in her hair tapping him firmly on the shoulder, an oversized ball of caramel fluff bouncing at her heels, turning him away from a trembling fairy-girl in a pub in a town called Domina. _"What's wrong? Maybe I can help. Let's go look for her together!"_

His new ally Rei a bloody whirlwind down in the depths of Mekiv Caverns, fighting with an exhilarating abandon to save his lost Pearl, once again turning his anger away from a less-willful female when they'd found her. She'd let him keep himself together, saving Pearl from a love/fear-born shaking.

Rei speaking to an old turtle at Lake Kilma, being spelled to see the fairies that fill every path from the first turn past the entrance all the way to the cliff. Chasing after a crew of Penguins and their walrus Captain when the fools had gone haring after a treasure that hadn't even existed. Jumping off that damned cliff to save the fools when the walrus had gotten petrified. He'd have laughed at the face she'd made when the turtle—he never would have guessed that it was Wisdom Toté—had suggested that she fight the lake's master to save the whole sorry lot of sailors if the situation hadn't been so serious.

Learning to speak Dudbear in Lumina, selling a Siren's lamps as a favor to that idiot centaur that wouldn't stop spouting bad poetry and worse love songs. If one could call them 'poems' or 'songs'. He sure as hell couldn't.

Her swearing at him the day after the adventure in Leires when she'd tracked him down to the pub where they'd first met, demanding to know what exactly his version of 'taking care of the little trash' was and _where the hell he'd been_ when she was fighting that blasted Jewel Beast of Sandra's.

Fighting their way across half of Madora Beach to satisfy Rei's curiosity about one of the sailor penguins they'd met at the Lake. David, she'd told him the penguin's name was. David was there with his fiancée Valerie. There had been something about an egg, and then that fight with a crab that had no right being the size of a Du'Inke, and then David had made some heroic, impossible vow and run off again. He didn't speak to Rei the whole way back to solid, non-sandy ground. Not that she'd noticed; she was too busy being all starry-eyed and romantic.

Watching colored lights flash across Rei's delighted face as she watched the fireworks bursting in the skies above Duma Desert. Walking out again, complaining about how they kept ending up in sand and talking and laughing and wishing that it had been nighttime.

Everything that'd happened in Geo, from Rei's confession to finding and losing Esmeralda, her sisters, and Diana. The look that had burned in Rei's eyes then scared him; dragons must have a look like that when someone raids their nests. It was the first time he was ever really scared of what Rei would do in the name of their friendship, besides cry. He knew she'd kill Sandra if she ever caught up with her.

And then they lost Pearl to Blackpearl for a little while, only to find them both somehow in the top room at Leires. Rei was the one who opened the door, no matter what she said. He never knew Pearl well enough to notice that she wanted to protect people, too. _He_ was too busy protecting _her_.

Finding Rei in that jewelry shop that Alex ran—or had run—and finding the Jumi's only Clarius locked in a magical prison where they'd never thought to look, where she'd been since the time of the war. He thought Rei called it 'Pandora's Box'. It hurt, finding out that Pearl and Blackpearl were one in the same, but at least it let him keep Pearl by his side for a little while longer. Rei told him that she'd already guessed about Pearl and Blackpearl—that she'd met Florina once before, when Florina's nightmares had dragged Rei into the Box before Rei could say 'lapis lazuli'. She said, _"__In Florina's dreams I saw those two split and merge and switch twice in your dream-self's presence, and I know they did it a third time when they were with the dream version of Sandra.__"_ He remembered that she'd growled, and then added, _"I had to fight another Jewel Beast by myself, by the way. Why do they keep making me do that?"_

She always wanted to _help_ people. Him, Pearl, anyone she met who needed a hand. It was more than that she couldn't help herself. She loved helped people.

Then he remembered a butterfly touch against his core when he lay vulnerable and in pain, before an equally light touch had brushed his hair out of his face so that he could look into green eyes gone dark with exhausted concern.

And he realized he didn't want to let all of that effort be for nothing. For once, Elazul would make sure that the one who helped everyone would, herself, be helped. Whether she liked it or not.

Raising his head and gaze, he looked around at the others staring somberly—if not with quite the same fervor as he had—at Rei's petrified body. "Everyone, could you give me a little life, please?" he asked into the silence.

Perking up, Rubens turned to the green-haired Knight with hope and comprehension dawning across his face. "You're going to give Rei a teardrop crystal?" _He_ remembered Rei with more clarity than he could remember anything of the haze of the years he'd spent in Gato Grottoes. The expression in her face when she'd rushed towards him after Sandra had stolen his core and vanished had spoken to the same feeling he'd carried since his beloved Diana had vanished into the maze of Geo. _I wasn't fast enough_, her eyes had told him. _Why couldn't I protect you?_

He'd done his best to rekindle her hope when she'd stumbled into his room in the Underworld, gentle green eyes going wide at the sight of him pacing the floor; done his best by declaring that _he_ wasn't going to let a little thing like being dead keep him from reaching for what he wanted. The laugh that she'd given him then had shaken the gloom that hung about the place to pieces.

Esmeralda, buried in a four-way hug with her sisters, gave Elazul a watery smile and hugged her family tighter. "I think I can cry," she said. She, Esmeralda, give up after spending so many years at the Academy learning spells? Let her brave, dear Knight stay a piece of rock for the rest of her life? No way! Not after the sound Rei had made when Sandra had stolen her core! Not after Rei had found her in the Underworld and apologized for being useless! She was going to get her Knight back and smack Rei silly!

Florina beamed at everyone in the room as others began to nod or call assent, glad that she'd be able to repay the warrior girl for making her dreams safe again. Cheeks already wet, she clapped her hands together once and called, "Everyone, bind your souls together, please! Let's make another teardrop crystal!"

Elazul grinned challengingly into Rei's stone eyes as colored motes began to drift around the statue, each one a scrap of a Jumi's life. His own tears rose from his cheeks and danced through the air to join the rest as grief fell from his heart at the thought that he would get his friend back.

And when she got back, he'd shake her until her teeth rattled, so help him, Goddess.

———

Olbohn floated back into Rei's chamber only a minute or two after Larc had arrived, the smile he was wearing bland, yet somehow giving the impression it was about to split his bulb-shaped head. Larc bared his fangs and growled at the Wisdom without budging or letting go of Rei, making his displeasure at the interruption known in a very primal way.

Rei blinked up at the Wisdom from beneath rumpled bangs and Larc's cheek, confusion penetrating the tears still spilling down her cheeks. "Why the smile, Olbohn?"

"I smile," the keeper of the Underworld replied happily, "because you are not going to be my problem much longer."

Rei blinked again. "Huh?"

Larc yelped and shot away from her as though someone had (literally) set his tail afire, leaving her alone amidst a cloud of dancing motes of light in every color of the rainbow. Spots on his armor were singed and blackened, tiny wisps of smoke rising from each black dot. And for once, Olbohn got the last word with her, as life began to draw Rei's spirit out of the Underworld.

"Marvelous things, Jumi tears."

———

Far beyond the entrance to the realm of the dead, and far from the topmost room of the Bejeweled City, a young Elf was curled on a padded bench watching a storm rage outside his window. Behind him, his slightly-taller sister finished climbing the last stair and stood with her hand resting on the banister. "There's a terrible storm outside," Lisa told her brother, wringing out her ponytail with a worried expression. "It's like the sky is falling! I barely got the monsters in their barn before it started pouring."

Dreamily, Bud traced patterns on the fogging glass and replied, "They say that when a Jumi cries, the sky cries with them. Did you know that?"

Lisa tossed her ponytail back over her shoulder and blinked over at her brother, who was still tracing lines onto clouded glass with the strangest expression on his face. Yawning, feeling the adrenaline that had flooded her in the skirmish to get their pet monsters to shelter drain away, she plunked herself down on the bench beside Bud and rubbed her eyes.

"I wonder if the pearl girl is crying," she mumbled, yawning again. "Or that lapis lazuli guy." For the life of her, she couldn't remember their names. She was too tired to try. One thought did fight free of her lassitude, and she looked over at Bud again. "Rei is late," she observed distantly, recalling that the note their teacher had sent them had said she'd be home sometime this afternoon.

Bud's finger stopped on the glass, the Elf boy gazing into the water sheeting down the outside of the pane. Then he closed his eyes. "Yeah."

Outside, the storm raged on.

———

When dawn broke, it was crowned by clouds tinted the most delicate shades of pink anyone ever remembered seeing, gowned in ribbons of light that curved through the air in tall swathes. Bud was the first to wake up from his curl on the bench, woken by the sounds of birds rousing in the thatch just outside the window. Rubbing sleep out of his eyes, he glanced up…and stared. "Lisa, wake up! Look!"

Lisa shook herself awake, propping herself up on her arms to stare out the window. "Whoah!"

"Rei called this the 'Aurora', didn't she?" Bud chattered, surprisingly awake for so early in the morning. "I didn't think you could see it anywhere but the snowfields in Fieg!"

Lisa nudged him firmly away from the window to get a better look at—not the sky—but the path leading up to their home. Grabbing Bud by the robe covering his shoulder, she hauled him off the bench and down the stairs, relief lighting her eyes. "It's Elazul and Pearl! That must mean Rei's home!"

Bud put on an extra dose of speed and raced past her, the two bursting onto the front steps just as the two Jumi came in through the small front gate. The expectant smiles on the Elf siblings' faces died at the grim expression Elazul wore. Bud peered around his sister to check Pearl—her eyes were red and so were her cheeks, like she'd spent a long time crying. His heart plummeted into his stomach, and he took a few steps to the side to stand defiant in the face of what was obviously going to be bad news.

Lisa stood tall, too, gazing accusingly at the Lazuli Knight when he came even with the mailbox. "Where is Master Rei?" she demanded in a voice gone high from fear. "Why isn't she right behind you?"

Elazul took a deep breath, glancing up at the sky for a moment before looking down at the young Elf. "I'm sorry," was all he said. "We tried."

_Hello, ground,_ Lisa thought distantly when her knees abruptly gave out and plopped her, a puppet with its strings cut, into a kneeling position. A wail tore itself from her heart, and she curled around her grief, the better to ignore the Jumi man kneeling beside her trying to offer her comfort.

Bud swore fit to turn the air blue as Pearl hid her face in her hands. "How could you??" he yelled at the Jumi, angry tears pouring down his face. "She _trusted_ you! You were the ones who were supposed to keep Master Rei from turning to stone!! This one little thing, and you blew it!!"

Rei cleared the garden gate in her customary leap and jogged up the path, grinning fit to crack her face in half. "Somebody mention me?" she asked merrily, beaming at the two Elves standing there in open-mouth shock. "I'm ba-ack!" she sing-songed, and laughed when twin cannonballs flung themselves into her arms, laughing and crying all at once.

"If you'd let me finish," Elazul chided gently, "You would have heard 'We tried to get here sooner'. Haven't you taught them how to listen, Rei?"

"Me?" Rei looked deeply offended, though she never let go of her foster-children . "Geez, Elazul, what about _you_? People will think somebody died if you keep glowering like that!"

Bud hiccuped, "So y-you didn't t-turn t-to stone?"

Rei just smiled down at them and ruffled their hair. "Smile, dear ones," was her reply, spoken gently, lovingly. "It's a new day. And that means new beginnings."

"Ugh!" Pearl cried, flinging her arms up. "You sounded like that rabbit merchant! 'Smile'!"

Rei recoiled, scandalized. "Pearl! How could you _say_ such a thing?"

Bud and Lisa glanced at each other, safe in their Master's arms, and then turned to stare up at Rei in accusation. She blinked down at them, startled. "What?"

"You're laughing," Bud told her darkly. "And _joking_. Who are you, and what have you done with our Master?"

"Oh, you!" Rei shook her head, propelling the children towards the corral. "Fine, be that way. See if I laugh anymore. Pearl, give these two gloomies a hand in getting breakfast for Nip and the other monsters, would you? Chores are just the thing for getting such skeptic children to stop questioning their teacher."

"Chores." Bud and Lisa spoke the word with mock-despair. "It's Master Rei, all right," Lisa sighed happily as the trio trotted off around the house.

Elazul and Rei stood in quiet for a few moments, listening to Bud yanking the barn door open despite the wood being water-logged and swollen, and Lisa's cheery greeting to the monsters inside. Then Elazul gazed slantwise as his friend. "You aren't going to tell them?"

Rei smiled, a secretive, quietly happy smile, listening to the sounds of Nip chasing her students around the corral yard in a show of pent-up energy. "I don't have to. They'll either figure it out, get Pearl to tell them, or they won't." She clapped him on the shoulder and gave him her usual, confident smile with a new edge of mischief. "Smile, Elazul," she told him cheerfully. "No one died today. That makes it good."

Elazul winced. "You really do sound like that rabbit when you say that, you know."

Rei shoved him into a mud puddle.

———

AN: If you choose to take Pearl instead of Elazul, he gives you his sword to help protect her. If you equip it (specifically after this adventure and before you start the Legend of Mana quest that ends the game) and visit certain lands, you can unlock one quest that was otherwise unavailable for whatever reason. Most of them—ie Rachel, Seeing Double, and Pee-Wee Birdie—are in Domina, but you can also use it to unlock Wimpy Thugling in Duma if you haven't gotten the Gnome Mana up to three. The downside is, it only works once. So pick your impossible quest wisely!

Again, happy holidays everyone! Be safe!


	36. The Mana Tree

Hello, everyone. I know it's been a good four years since you've heard from me, and for those of you still following this story I can only apologize for the long wait. It's taken having surgery and forcibly taking a week off from two jobs to finally finish this tale, and honestly I'm not entirely happy with the ending. But, here it is at last. The final responses, chapter and the epilogues.

Disclaimer: In the words of another author here, ahahahahaha. No.

**Fantasy-Magician:** Yep. It takes certain Mana levels to unlock a few of the smaller quests, or a certain number of quests finished. It's simpler to just stick the Sword of Mana artefact next to Domina and be done with it, and just make sure Duma Desert's Gnome level is maxed. If you don't do those things, Elazul's sword will unlock one of them for you when you equip it. In regards to Niccolo's final quest, once you take the amnesiac rabbit to Kristie the first time, take him to the Cancun Bird's nest in Geo, then go pick him back up in Polpota. Repeat until the quest ends.

**Meerf:** I think I did Wimpy Thugling, at least as a side mention? Somewhere? Possibly? Drat, now I have to go read through the whole thing again. If I haven't, well, I'll have something else to do when I get around to reworking the Faeries arc. Infernal Doll was the adventure mentioned in the chapter Daddy's Broom. (Pearl might be canon, but I feel worse leaving Elazul to get eaten even if it is only temporarily.)

**Reiko x 3: **Yep, time for the tree. OPOS, that's a good acronym.

**Airess Byrd:** 1)Thanks. Yeah, Mephianse's second quest always depressed me as much as the Faerie arc. 2)Major nightmares, indeed. I love the dialogue that changes depending on who's with you. 3) Thank you. And enjoy the rest of the story.

**Fyuro: **Heere, bunny-bunny. :) Yes, fighting scenes are my absolute least favorite to write. And I don't know about you, but when the story's MC has no personality, it just isn't any fun to read. (Gundam Wing aside. Sorry, Heero. I watched it for Duo and Wu Fei.) I'm glad you enjoyed what you read.

**TheMoonClaw:** Play the game anyway. It's fun. I apologize again for taking so long. As for Rei's name, ding-ding! You're absolutely correct. It _is_ short for something, and you find out what in Epilogue 1. The Venstrys have a tradition of giving their children names that are easy to shorten.

**Tiamat42: **1) -hugs- Thank you for being one of my most loyal readers. (Even if you tried not to be, heh.) I'm glad I didn't bog folks down with minutiae. Gods only know we only need one Robert Jordan. As for Gilbert and Monique...I think I'd rather not consider the results of _that_ relationship. 2) -laughs- I think I answer your question about Rei in this chapter, but if I don't, it's a little column a, little column b. Matilda never really did make a lot of sense, but I think it was more Irwin being her best friend/would-be-lover that let him keep up.3) He took her power even when he knew it would hurt her, because it was her spiritual powers that were putting her in succession for Abbess-hood. And then he tried to fix it. Badly. Because it was a world that was hurting Matilda and he wanted her to be happy and live her own life. The four of them being idiots, however, it didn't work out so well. Still not sure on the Wisdom thing. 4) I tried, but my love in this game was the Jumi, hands down. As Dragonseer once said when I finished the Jumi arc, "Well! The game's over. Let's head for the Tree." 5) I'm glad I got Florina's dream to make more sense. 6) Olbohn is fun to mess with.

**Shadowstar:** I honestly liked the knives best. They let you attack constantly if you time it right and the final attacks were some of my favorite. As well, swords and pole-arms tend to be used much more often. I figured I'd try something different. (I have a notebook filled entirely with game-script. Let me know if I can return the offer of help. -grin- )

**Shadowzerover5:** Thank you!

**Kahran042:** -eyebrow quirk- Then speak up when a vote's being cast. It now stands at 7+ responses to two, negative majors. Did you like or care about anything else? Comments, criticism, questions, anything?

** Athina. na:** I'm sorry? It's finished now, promise. Mm, chocolate and biscuit cake. Num. It took me a bit longer than you wanted, but here's the last bit. And I'm glad you enjoyed the story and my writing. (As far as the order goes, this appears to be one of the most common. Even the strat guide I borrowed once had the quests in similar order.) Enjoy!

**Nana-chan21:** -blushes- Thank you! I'm afraid Xan's wrath will likely end up a side story if I ever have another chance to get back into writing, and I hope to eventually include at least some of those images as other side stories. But no promises on those, I'm afraid.

**For everyone else who did not raise their voices, in positive or negative response, but keep your eyes out for me, thank you. You are not forgotten.**

—

Parchment crinkled dryly in the desert heat as Rei stepped through the gates of Etansel and onto the busy streets of the lowest tier. It was a letter from Xan...sort of. He'd never written her anything so short. It was little more than a couple of sentences and one post-script that had prompted her to come back to the Jumi city less than a month after she'd left it. _'Rei,'_ it went, _'meet me ten miles south-south-west of Domina tomorrow about twelve. Trust me, you can't miss the place. I know you've picked up on the new Mana signature. Xan. PS. You can bring someone if you feel like it, but I gotta warn you now. If you bring that Lazuli you're so sweet on, I have a few words to say to him when we meet up.'_

Well, Rei had a few things to say to her brother, starting with a vehement denial that she was sweet on _anybody. _But since her foster-children were busy preparing for the summer exams held in the Geo Academy, Elazul was as good as anyone to bring along to whatever wild adventure that Xan had in mind.

_The exams._ Rei swallowed a grumble and kept her expression pleasant as she passed a number of Jumi who waved and smiled at her, calling greetings and welcomes. The twins had found out that the Academy had tried to blackmail her into forcing them back thanks to a rare, careless slip of the tongue, and there hadn't been peace in the cottage for a week until she'd agreed to let her apprentices sit for the exams. They were, as they'd told her—in unison, no less—going to show those stuffed shirts just what they were missing out on, and then they were going to come back to the cottage and let Nunuzac and the rest keep on missing out.

_"We love it _here_, Master Rei," _Lisa had explained patiently to her rather shell-shocked teacher. _"We'll take the exams so that you don't have to keep hunting for the books we need to keep learning."_ She hadn't spared her teacher's pride either, stating that Rei was starting to look a bit frazzled over it and the twins just hadn't wanted to say anything sooner.

Well, what could Rei say to that? She had gone to see Kathinja, and had endured the ten minutes of gleeful cackling that the basilisk-woman had indulged in when the knife-fighter had explained that she'd come to get the registration forms.

Warmth and irritation swirled in her stomach, causing Rei to discard that line of thought entirely before she either burst out laughing or cursing. The Jumi already thought she was crazy for being willing to sacrifice her life for them; she didn't need to go and give them any proof of it.

A cheerful hail rose from the ruined courtyard where once only illusions held sway, bringing a real smile to her face as she found herself amongst familiar faces at last. Her arms were abruptly full of laughing girl when Esmeralda flung herself at the knife-fighter for a hug, with her sisters smiling indulgently on. "Hi, Rei!"

"Hi, 'Melda," Rei chuckled, giving her friend that hug before disentangling herself. "Have you seen 'Lazul?"

"Oh, he's over there," came the answer, Esmeralda turning to point towards the far end of the courtyard. Elazul was leaning against a broken arch, wearing a small, contented smile as he watched Pearl mingle with the other Jumi relaxing in the open space. He flicked his gaze up when he felt their eyes on him, that smile warming several degrees at the sight of the knife-fighter standing with one arm wrapped around Esmeralda's shoulders.

"Rei."

The golden-haired sprite reminded herself again very firmly that she was _not_ sweet on _anyone_, let alone stubborn, stupidly noble, brave, grumpy, overprotective Knights who didn't have the common sense the Goddess gave a Popo bug when it came to their own safety. And stomped very hard on the shiver that the warmth in his voice sent thrilling up her spine.

_Okay. So maybe I _am_ a _little_ sweet on him,_ Rei sighed to herself as she walked up to her closest friend. But looking up into deep blue eyes that had the first unfettered, unshadowed glints of happiness glowing in their depths that she had ever seen there, she wondered if there was a woman in Etansel who would blame her. "Hi, 'Laz."

"I'm shocked your watchdogs let you out of their sight so soon," he joked, settling his shoulder more comfortably against worn stone. "It's barely been a month."

She waved a hand carelessly. "I got booted out of the cottage for the next few days. They got it into their heads to take the Academy's summer exams and they've been doing nothing but study for the past two weeks. And constantly complaining that I am underfoot and making a downright nuisance of myself."

Elazul quirked an eyebrow. "After all we've been through, you can't expect me to believe that's the only reason you're here."

"You know, there was a conversation we had a few weeks ago where you complained that I knew you too well," Rei shot back, propping one hand on her hip and ready to indulge in one of their verbal spars. "Don't I get to complain about the boot being on the other foot?"

"Extenuating circumstances. There was a hunter after my core and the core of every Jumi she could lay her hands on. I was trying to keep you from _dying_, which, as you may have noticed, didn't work out terribly well." Which reminded Elazul of something rather important. "If you happen to see your brother before I do, you might want to explain things to him. I like my neck and he might decide to hug it really hard the next time he sees me."

"Funny you should mention Xan." Rei pulled out the note and handed it to the Lazuli Knight. "And people he gets pissed off at usually get fed to Shard, anyway."

"Reassuring," Elazul drawled, glancing at the page before he passed it back and levered himself off the pillar. "When do we leave?"

Rei glanced up in startlement from tucking the paper away. "You're coming with me just like that? I mean, this _is_ Xan we're talking about. Remember my birthday two years ago? That whole conversation of big monsters and looking for them and how with him, it's never 'or not'?"

"Yes, I remember," Elazul told her with long-suffering patience as he took her by the elbow and began leading her up the road. "I also distinctly remember that you have this distressing habit of finding the biggest pile of trouble there is within a hundred miles and jumping straight into it feet first. At least if I'm there, I can grab you by the scruff of your neck and haul you back from rushing in headlong. That way, I have you to help me do the same with Xan."

"Me? Rush in headlong?" Rei sputtered, freeing her elbow to tug on the nearest strand of deep green hair. "_That's_ the pot calling the kettle black as coal! And you're being optimistic on this whole 'haul Xan out of trouble' idea. The man _lives_ for it."

"Whereas you only have it land on you whenever you leave home," the blue-eyed man retorted, laughter rising from the other Jumi as they chimed their agreement. Rei protested her innocence to her friends, knowing that neither they nor the other Jumi of this city would ever believe her.

"It's so good to have everyone together!" laughed Esmeralda from where she now stood amongst her sisters. "But Rei! I was so surprised by you! Maybe teardrop crystals are inside everyone."

The sprite shifted uncomfortably and shrugged. "Of course they are, 'Melda. The crystals are...they just _are_. If you can feel emotion, you can cry if you let yourself. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise." Esmeralda smiled and nodded, not bothering to argue. She knew that if she tried to point out that she'd been unable to cry for her sisters, Rei would only point out that the entire Jumi race had been able to cry for the knife-fighter, so what was stopping her now?

As an attempt to divert attention from herself, Rei ducked over to the half-crumbled stairs where Rubens oversaw the workings of the city. "The Bejeweled City..." the Ruby Knight sighed quietly between them. "It seems brighter than I remember. Florina has cheered up, too." The grim expression softened. "She even laughs once in a while."

"I'm glad to hear that," Rei told him with one of her gentler smiles. "How's Diana?"

A sandstone-pale hand gestured absently at nothing. "Better. I have to remind her that even we older Jumi still need sleep every once and a while, but she's more hopeful now than any of us have been in decades." A pause, and then Rubens' mouth crooked into a wry half-smile. "You know, only Jumi have been allowed in Etansel since the walls were built. I suppose we'll make an exception for you, however. It would hardly be fitting to ban the person who saved us all."

Rei only grinned at the dry joke and tilted her head amidst the soft chime of her pipes. "I didn't do it alone."

Crimson hair dipped in agreement. "No, you didn't. Which makes you even more remarkable."

The Jumi savior opened her mouth with puzzlement knitting her forehead and had a sun-brown hand come to rest on her shoulder. "A wry face as usual," Elazul observed with light-hearted sympathy from just behind Rei, leaning around her to give his elder a half-smile of his own. "Is it that tough to be one of the Lucidia?"

Rubens let out a sigh and rubbed at the back of his neck. "Yes. We must protect the city and bring our friends together quickly. No telling how many people will be after our cores once word of our revival gets out."

"Just don't overdo it like Diana," the younger Knight chided, a gentle squeeze of his hand stopping his friend's reflexive motion towards her knives. "Don't forget you have us, too."

The Knight of Ruby looked down from his height and recalled a sunlit, windy day much like this one, where a crown of gold had placed itself between himself and his doom before he had foolishly sent it away. Eyes the color of bright moss had burned then in fierce protection...just as they burned now, as that same crown placed itself as shield and sword between his people and the rest of the world.

Beside the most generous heart he had ever known stood the one Jumi to survive against everything that Sandra and her master had thrown at him, still wearing a half-smile as he gently patted invisible hackles down on the back of Rei's neck.

Lips curving into a rare smile of his own, Rubens gave them both a deeper nod of his head, thinking to himself, _how can we fall to ruin again with hearts like these fighting for us all?_ Out loud, he simply answered, "Alright. I'll remember that."

Satisfied, Elazul turned and went to go say his goodbyes to Pearl and the others, leaving Rei alone with Rubens again. "I know that look you're wearing," she said in an undertone, obviously trying to change the subject away from death and trouble. "It's the one that says you have something else to say."

Crimson eyes warmed a little at the easy way she could read him already. "And you wouldn't be wrong...Rei, I sense a sparkle from you, even though you've told us yourself that there are no Jumi in your family. It's a warm, strong light. That strength is what saved the Jumi. Saved me," Rubens added in a quiet murmur that barely reached across the distance between them. Years of cold, lonely waiting lurked beneath the words, burned to ash by the music he could hear in the soul before him. "Do not lose it, that sparkle."

Rei looked over her shoulder at the small crowd mingling in the courtyard a few dozen yards away, laughter and gossip rising to fill the air with life. Watched for a moment the cheerful interaction of Elazul with Pearl and Esmeralda, and then turned back. Tucking her hands behind her back, she rocked forward onto her heels and beamed at the one who'd given her hope in the Underworld. "Yeah, I don't think that'll ever happen. Nothing to worry about there, so don't. Okay?"

And then she bounced off with a wave, calling back that she would say her real goodbyes on the way out once she'd finished popping in on Florina.

A strange, fizzy sensation bubbled in the older Knight's chest as he watched a grinning Rei pounce on an unsuspecting Pearl in an enthusiastic 'hello', sending them both over in a pile of tangled limbs and breathless giggles. The sensation expanded outwards, growing until it burst out in the first real laugh Rubens had had in over a century.

—

"It's nice to see everyone so happy," Rei commented as she and Elazul climbed the last stairs to the Chamber of the Clarius. "You know, I've only seen Rubens smile once or twice since I met him? I never heard him laugh before. Even Diana's smiling!" _And hoping,_ she added silently to herself, remembering what Rubens had told her and the surprisingly upbeat—if brief—conversation she'd had herself with the Diamond Jumi not more than fifteen minutes ago.

"We have you to thank for it, wildcat," Elazul told her affectionately, stretching a hand out to rumple at her hair. "Because of you, the Jumi have a future again. It does a lot to improve our outlooks on life," he added, voice and step light.

Rei chuckled, acknowledging the truth in that. They hit the top landing and the knife-fighter's hand was reaching for the knob to Florina's door when a sound caught their ears.

The easily-recognized, sharp _plap_ of heavy cardstock falling onto cobblestone.

Elazul was closer to the note and scooped it up, breaking the wax seal while Rei looked up and around for any sign of a certain jewel thief or where the note could have been dropped from. But she gave it up after a moment or two, knowing perfectly well that it would take her a few more years before she caught up to Sandra's level of speed and agility. The fact that it had taken Sandra a couple _hundred_ years to reach her current abilities soothed Rei's irritation somewhat.

A little.

Her friend's face was a study of bemusement as he read the note's contents out loud. "'Take care of Florina for me!' Sandra the jewel hunter was thinking of the Jumi in her own way, I suppose," Elazul sighed, tucking the note away in a belt-pouch.

Rei growled. "If she ever thinks of them that way again I'll do worse than kick her ass from Eastern Sea to Western! That woman is not allowed to lay a hand on the Jumi again. Not while I'm still breathing."

Well accustomed to her temper, Elazul just patted her on the shoulder with his unarmored hand. "I didn't say that I agreed with her course of action, wildcat. But people will do just about anything for the people they love. I'm including you in that statement, or have you forgotten that mess with your dragoon friends?"

That won him a rather impressive blush and a grumpy mutter of 'cheap shot' from the knife-fighter. And with the matter settled, the two went in to say hello to Florina and her Clarius companions.

—

"I mean it, 'Laz," Rei continued once they'd gotten outside Etansel's main gates, though at a much calmer degree than when they'd first read the note, "if Sandra comes back around to try and use the lives of the Jumi for her own ends, then I'll have to apologize to Florina for doing something violently drastic to that woman."

"I know, Rei, I know." Elazul offered his hand to her, palm up, and gave her an encouraging smile. "But if that happens, _you_ know that I'll be right there with you." He'd already let her damn herself once for his people; he'd be twice damned and shattered before he'd let her do it alone again.

For a moment all she did was blink at him before an answering smile bloomed and she slapped her hand into his. "Right. Always and ever. We'll hit Sandra so hard we might actually knock some sense into that thick skull of hers."

The pair shook on it, and then Rei whistled for the young dragon napping on a sand dune close by. They and Spark vanished in a swirl of sand and magics without ever noticing the cloaked figure leaning against the wall less than fifty feet away.

They were covered in heavy fabric against the sun and windblown sands, battered stone armor peeking out here and there amidst the folds. Face shaded by a deep hood, the newcomer regarded the place where the trio had vanished only a moment ago, a brief smirk flashing out of the shadows. "Pretty damn mouthy for a Guardian," they chuckled. Then they turned, banging the stone of the open gates with an affectionate fist, an open grin now shining white as the chime of a core sang out in greeting to the ripples of energy tied into ancient stone. "Wonder if one of us married into your clan, Jak. Girl looked the spittin' image o' you."

A shrug beneath the cloak. "Ah, well. Doesn't matter. Time to go scare the whey out of Rubens and that shrew Diana. I'll scare that bratty kid of mine when he gets back."

—

When the companions appeared back in the solid world again, it was in an unexpected tangle of bodies and limbs. Elazul spat out a wingtip and some of his own hair and shoved a golden-scaled muzzle out of his face, searching for the owner of the arm currently flung across his chest. "Rei, you really need to work on your..." He trailed off when a gentle shake of the offending arm earned him not so much as a twitch. "...Rei?"

Nothing. Not even a whisper of a complaint when Spark extracted himself from the pile, accidentally stepping on Rei's hip.

More worrisome still was the absolute quiet that suddenly ruled the back of Elazul's mind, where the white noise formed by that slender magical bond between himself and Rei had fizzed with the music of her emotions. Her soul song—as familiar by now after more than a year of listening as the music of his own core—had vanished.

"You had better not be dead again," he whispered fiercely, swallowing back panic to pull himself upright before rolling Rei onto her back. Stripping off the crystalline gauntlet that he'd worn for so long, he used that hand to check for the rise and fall of her breathing while the fingers of the other sought for the pulse in her throat. "I will be very upset with you if you're dead again. And your brother with have quite a few things to say to me as well."

There. Palm resting just under her collarbone, Elazul murmured a prayer in thanks to the Goddess when he felt Rei's chest expand in a shallow breath. Her pulse was slow as the seasons against his fingertips but just as steady.

That was the moment that Rei let out a near-soundless moan, stirring under his hands only to fall still once again. Elazul waited a few heartbeats to see if she would repeat the effort, then sat back on his heels. "Making noises means she really is still breathing, which means she really isn't dead," the Jumi male sighed to the dragonet that had come around to huddle against his shoulder, "which is reassuring, at least. Goddess, but this woman is going to give the both of us heart attacks if she keeps pulling stunts like this," Elazul added, absently rubbing Spark's nose to comfort the anxious cub.

_Skrrik,_ was the dragonet's wholehearted agreement.

—

The sun had ambled an inch or so along its path by the time Rei stirred and fought her way back to consciousness. Elazul was right there, helping her sit up with his brow furrowed in concern at the way a whispery noise of pain leaked past gritted teeth.

She swallowed after she was upright—fighting nausea or working to dampen her throat, he wasn't sure, and gave him a half-hearted smile with eyes closed to near-slits. "I'm going to find the Du'Inke that keeps stepping on me and skin it."

"What in the name of the Goddess _happened_, Rei?" Elazul demanded in a low voice. He _wanted_ quite badly to shout, but Rei was pressing the heels of her hands against her temples in the fashion reserved for someone trying to keep their brains from leaking out their ears, and he had the feeling that one good shout at proper volume would do nothing but send her unconscious again.

She made a noise of discomfort anyway despite his admirable restraint and squeezed her eyes shut again as she answered. "Mana overload," Rei told him, as if it explained everything.

Elazul reminded himself again that yelling really _would not_ do any good and watched as Spark waddled over to shade Rei's head with a wing. "Mana what?"

"Overload." Shielded from the sunlight pooling around them, Rei was able to look at him without wincing for the first time since she'd woken, though one hand was absently kneading the muscles at the back of her neck in an attempt to loosen them. "Never heard of it?"

"No."

"Oh. Well, I'm not really sure how to explain it..." They were silent for a few moments as she thought before Rei tried to help Elazul understand. "Best I can come up with is a comparison. You told me a few weeks ago that Jumi can hear the songs of stones, right?" He nodded. "Mana overload is like someone taking that song and increasing the volume to deafening levels."

The young Knight didn't even have to think about that to shudder. Being struck with a near-concussive wall of sound made from someone's or something's _soul_ was nowhere on his list of things he wanted to experience firsthand. "Are you all right?"

Her answering grin was lopsided and nowhere near its usual bubbly levels, but steady nonetheless. "I have a headache the size of Fieg and a mild case of the shakes. Most of it's from losing control of the teleport spell and it backlashing on me. A few more minutes and a drink of water and I should be fine."

Elazul gave her a look that he had found himself using at least once in each encounter with the golden-haired sprite. Usually after instances like this, now that he thought about it. It was a mix of dubiousness, concern, and exasperation. "Fine? You were _unconscious_ for nearly ten minutes, Rei."

"And I'm awake now," she countered, starting to sound grumpy. "My body isn't glass, 'Laz, I can take a few hits and not shatter. Xan trained me, after all, and he can sense Mana even better than I can. I mean sure, I wouldn't be able to feel a Stone if it was two feet in front of me right now, but that'll go away in an hour or two. Probably."

"What?"

"That signature was _powerful_," Rei went on like she hadn't even heard his verbal knee-jerk. "I won't be surprised if you can't hear a damn thing from the rocks, even. There's so much Mana around us right now that you'd be lucky to hear a spell go off at all; it's got to be muffling anything even remotely magical in nature in the area."

That might explain why he couldn't 'hear' the soul-link between them right now. But that wasn't important at the moment. "Rei..."

"I mean, I've even been to the Junkyard, and you haven't _felt_ Mana until you're walking among giant piles of abandoned artifacts left over from the Wars..."

"Rei."

"...even Jajara's Stone wasn't that strong—"

"_Rei._"

"What?" Rei scowled at him for the interruption.

"You can sense Mana?"

She blinked at him, headache evidently already forgotten along with whatever she'd just been saying. "Yeah. I've been able to my whole life, though I've gotten a lot better at it since I started practicing flow-meditations. Rosiotti taught me about those. Why? The way you look it's like it's important or something."

Would not shout, would _not_, even if she deserved it. "That's because it _is_, you crazy wildcat. The ability to sense Mana is really _rare_. The Jumi are the ones who have it the most often, and never more than perhaps three or four in an entire generation. _All of them_ have been Clarius. We see it maybe, _maybe_ once or twice in a generation in the other races, and never more than that many people at a time. And even _they_ usually have Jumi blood in them from somewhere."

"Okay. And?"

He sighed. "Are you _sure_ you don't have Jumi blood in you? At all?" he asked plaintively.

"Positive." She reached back a little and rubbed at the heavier scales around Spark's eyes, the dragonet shoving his head against her hand in encouragement. "It's a Venstry thing; everyone in my family's had it to some degree or another since the War of Eyes."

"Even your relatives on the East Continent?"

Rei shrugged. "Maybe. I don't know, I've never asked."

Now Elazul was the one with the headache. Goddess save him, but Rei didn't seem to have any idea just how powerful that ability made her and her family. "Rei..."

"Look, 'Laz, it really isn't that big of a deal," the knife-fighter interrupted, rising to her feet and stretching stiff limbs. "Mostly it tends to be an inconvenience when you're trying to get around areas where Mana's concentrated. When I first went near a Stone? I couldn't even _see_ straight because that much energy went and put the whole world in a kaleidoscope."

"Remind me when we've met up with Xan and he's done feeding me to Shard to tell the two of you about a couple of Jumi legends that talk about Mana sensing," Elazul said, giving up on trying to explain for the time being. He rose to his own feet and dusted bits of grass off his cloak. "Maybe then you'll understand why I was so surprised." _Though I don't know why I am, really,_ he added to himself, feeling a wry sort of self-mockery begin to quirk at the corners of his mouth, _considering how much they've done since I've met them._

Rei merely made a noise of assent, going through her things to make sure that nothing had been lost during the botched transit. She was still a little pale, sweat a thin, gleaming layer quickly evaporating under the heavy sunshine, but he knew that his companion would have a fit if he tried to delay them any longer than they already have been.

He merely let her take the lead when they started walking again, going back in his memories and mulling over what had just been spoken of and prodding at the bits that didn't make sense. Like what she'd said about there being so much Mana in the air that it was muffling everything else. _Wouldn't be surprised if I can't hear anything from the rocks even, hm?_ Well, it was worth a try, anyway.

So he stretched the innate sense that wasn't quite listening and wasn't quite feeling that every Jumi possessed, and found the music of the rocks and earth around them with no effort at all. Though their songs were _quite_ a bit more boisterous than he was expecting. "Wildcat, what kind of signature did you say it was?"

Rei glanced back at him over her shoulder. "Hm? Oh, I have no idea. Xan didn't tell me, either. But it's certainly _strong_, whatever it is. Felt like more than a dozen Stones all in one place before it up and smacked me silly."

Here at least he could offer an opinion. "It's not a Stone. I've encountered them before, if only once or twice, and they've got their own soul-song that's as loud as any Jumi's. I'm not picking up anything other than normal rocks and earth."

Very _happy_ rocks and earth. Gnome save him, but now that he was listening to them he was having a hard time tuning them back out again.

Rei gave him a shrug. "I don't know what it could be, then. All of the artifacts left at the Junkyard had their own signatures, even if they did tend to blend a bit, and I'm not sure what else besides a Stone can hold that much Mana without going ka-blooey. Nothing man-ma...made?"

Elazul couldn't blame her for her voice going high in disbelief when they topped a last rise and the ground fell away before them into a grassy bowl. Not when they were presented with an impossibility hovering above a sea of mist in the depths of the bowl. An impossibility nearly cloaked by a dome of clouds that almost buried the sun's light, if not its heat, that reached innumerable branches towards the sky.

Beside him Rei let out a joyous whoop and took off running. "It's the Tree! Look! It's really the Tree! It's come back!"

"That...it can't..." Elazul forced himself to take a deep breath around his shock, elation uncurling its first leaf at the back of his mind the first hint that his unique soul-bond with Rei really had only been muffled. That what he was seeing was the Mana Tree was not possible, could not be possible—it had burned down centuries ago, before he was even born!

Floating serenely above the landscape, the massive trunk and spreading canopy chided him for his disbelief. It _was_ the Mana Tree, for how could it be anything else? No other single plant in the entire history of Fa'Diel had ever matched the girth of their Goddess' physical shell, nor, to be frank, had there ever been another spectacle of Nature to come close.

He was still standing there trying to wrap his head around the concept that the Tree had returned by the time Rei came running back amidst exasperated laughter to pull him into motion. From there it was a race between the two humanoids and the young dragonet that soared around them to the base of their goal, the place where massive roots drifted down to sink themselves into the earth.

And there they were met by a familiar, lanky figure dressed in bright colors, who spread his feathered arms and welcomed them in a far more solemn voice than they were used to, to the Sanctuary of Mana. "The Mana Goddess is the light, and thus She could not see Herself," intoned Pokiehl, sounding truly _serious_ for the first time since Rei had met him. "She used Her light to outline Herself in shadow. Her visions began the creation of this universe. Everything in the world has a common beginning: Her light.

"But the desire to know one's self became shadow, and separated us. Do not detest the darkness. That is all you need to know. Words are your powers. The Goddess will speak to you with Her powers. If you know you can handle that power, then proceed."

Rei nodded once, and the Wisdom stepped aside, gesturing for them to go on with one arm. Without a moment's hesitation the knife-fighter stepped out onto the lowest part of the root, head high and eyes shining. Elazul snapped to his senses then, remembering that they were supposed to _wait_, they were meeting someone here and it wasn't just Pokiehl, and opened his mouth to protest.

A feathered hand on his shoulder silenced him, and he looked up into compassionate, dark eyes. Pokiehl shook his head a little and told him softly, "You cannot stop her. This is part of her destiny, as it is her brother's, and it is what they are. Go. She will welcome your help, and you will find him already waiting for you."

Well, when it was put _that _way...Elazul nodded and broke loose from the light hold, jogging a bit to catch up to the vanishing heels of his companion and her pet. He never looked back, and so never saw it when Pokiehl smiled and disappeared from sight.

—

They didn't make it very far in before Elazul caught up; it was because Rei had stopped to stare up in delighted amazement at the way the space around them went up, and up, and even father into darkness when the path led them into the hollow trunk of the Tree. Starring the velvet depths were enormous shelf-fungi, none of them smaller than their heads and some of them bigger than the top floor of Rei's cottage, all glowing a beautiful amethyst hue that lit the inner curves and whorls of trunk a deep blue-green.

"It's incredible," Rei breathed once Elazul had taken his place beside her, never breaking her gaze away from her surroundings. "Look at them all; and just think, we're the first people to set foot here in nearly a thousand years."

"First, barring Xan," Elazul told her. "Pokiehl says he's already waiting for us, I assume somewhere near the top."

"Ah, figures." The knife-fighter shook her head with a rueful smile. "I sometimes think I'd be outrageously jealous of the man if I didn't love him so much. I guess we'd better hurry or he'll start wondering what's taking us so long to climb a simple tree."

The Jumi Knight snorted at the joke and they resumed walking, Spark flying in circles around them as much as the curving spaces of the hollow would let him, only coming back down to their level when the shelf-fungi led them to a hole back into open air.

That was where they encountered the first monster, a Marlboro waiting in patient ambush on the main part of the outer trunk. Rei froze for a heartbeat in utter denial at what she was seeing before her knives flicked out and pinned the unwary creature to the wood behind it. It vanished in a puff of spores as Rei stalked over and reclaimed her blades. "Monsters!" she growled, whirling to face Elazul. "There are monsters _here_, waiting to prey on travelers. On the Tree!"

"Everywhere has monsters, wildcat," Elazul reminded her, although he too was shaken at the thought of such aggressive creatures being here, of all places. "This is just another place for them to live."

Rei's expression told him that she wanted to protest, but his logic made too much sense for her to actually try. Instead, she simply kept her blades out and resumed walking upwards, much of the joy at her surroundings gone.

But even monsters couldn't keep her spirits down for long, and soon she had rejoined Elazul in staring in open wonder at the sheer volume of _life_ covering practically every inch of trunk and cradled farther out amongst the larger branches—the least of which would take more than twenty people with their arms outstretched to touch fingertips. Ferns, grasses, and epiphytes like bromeliads, pitcher plants and mosses abounded, nestled in the grooves of the Tree's bark, while the larger ferns, shrubs and climbing vines were those that lived amongst the branches in soil that collected there. Orchids and other flowers bloomed wherever they pleased, adding splashes of color to the green chaos.

The monsters and a few rare treasure chests were hardly noticed and gone from memory the moment they were dealt with.

It was only when they came near to the very top of the Tree that they found the first signs of mortal hands; a stone archway with railings on either side, nearly overgrown entirely by vines and roots. Elazul didn't think much of it and began to walk through it when he was stopped by a draconic chirrup.

He found Rei simply standing there when he turned back, running her fingertips across greens and grays like she was afraid it would crumble to dust beneath her touch. Spark was crouched on the ground behind her, looking back and forth between the knife-fighter and the swordsman. "Rei?" Elazul called gently, rewarded by a deep sigh.

"Do you know what these stones are, 'Laz?"

"Granite, it looks like."

A chuckle swept the air between them—she turned her head and Elazul found with a jolt that tears were running down her cheeks in glittering trails. He would have asked what was wrong if she hadn't been beaming as big as he'd ever seen her. "Very funny. I meant _besides_ what kind of rock they are." When he shook his head, she twisted around and spread her arms wide in unconscious imitation of Pokiehl. "This is the entrance to the main Sanctuary, where thousands of pilgrims traveled every year to pray to the Goddess. And thousands of years ago, _my Tribe_ carved these very stones and laid them here in a time when we still had our own _name_."

She laughed, rich and joyful and bright, spinning around in place a few times. "This is one of the starting points for my family's entire history, and I'm standing _right here_! In a place I thought I'd never see! Where no one has been for nine hundred years! It's incredible! I don't know whether I should go for a book or pray or dance or _anything_!"

Her joy was infectious even without the tickling fronds of it at the back of his head, and Elazul found himself grinning in response even as he walked back and caught her by the hand. "Well, for starters," he chided the pair of wide emerald eyes that had fastened on him in surprise, "for all the historical significance, it's still a _door_, little wildcat. Doors are meant for walking through."

And he drew her through the archway and into a realm filled with unexpected sunshine. It blazed down on them, fierce as a hawk and somehow gentle and welcoming as a favorite blanket by the fire after a snowstorm, lighting up the verdant plant-life around them into a dizzying spill of greens.

There were monsters here, too. Spark warned them of it as they approached a raised stone platform, its edges worn and chipped away by the years, by folding himself into a shallow dive amidst a flurry of hisses. Rei's knives were out and nearly blinding in the golden light, the knife fighter already up the steps and engaging their opponents by the time Elazul could draw his sword. Even as he mounted the steps the Knight thought the fight would already be over with by the time he could see what they were fighting, only to have Rei go flying back over his head with a startled yip scarcely before he could finish his thought.

A duck born purely from reflex let him avoid both flailing limbs and a swing from a heavy wooden branch at the same time, Elazul's sword coming up to bite into the offending extremity of a rather grumpy-looking Wooding with a dull thunk. The Knight had enough time to frown before he was ducking another swing—his blade hadn't gone nearly as far into the tree demon as he'd expected from prior encounters with its type. What exactly was this thing made of?

A soft patter heralded Rei's return to the fight, hair ornaments chiming as she went airborne in one of the techniques Elazul was familiar with, something she called Moonsault Stomp. It involved a flip kick and a ridiculously high jump, and ended with Rei in the perfect position to carve away pieces of wood in the monster's blind spot.

Which she did, with a fierce scowl of concentration as she took out flailing branches intended by their owner to crush their skulls. Elazul moved easily in tandem with her and her weapons and soon the Wooding was a fading pile of broken splinters. The two never missed a beat when they moved to take out the Punkster that Spark had been keeping busy.

Dizzy from a chain of hits that had sent it rolling through the air, the imp simply couldn't put up the same fight as its companion had. Then again, it was only a construct bespelled into flesh and not far more durable wood.

Knives sheathed for the moment, Rei dusted her hands and frowned at their surroundings. "I don't like this," she said after several moments. "Those monsters were a lot stronger than they ought to have been."

Elazul nodded in distracted agreement, pulling several bits of Wooding out of his hair and clothes. "We'd better check the rest of the place out. If we've somehow missed Xan on the way up, the Goddess only knows how he'll fare if he gets caught in an ambush like this one."

Coral lips quirked into a wry smile. "Probably fine, knowing him, but still..." Anxiety knitted her forehead as Rei trotted down the steps that led deeper into the Sanctuary. "Let's see if there _are_ any more monsters around. I'll never hear the end of it if one eats his notebook or something when he isn't looking..."

The half-hearted joke did nothing to fool her companions. Spark let out a soft creel and took off, flying above their little group. Elazul simply fell into step beside her once he'd caught up to Rei, knowing full well that it wasn't just Xan's safety that had her worried. The creatures they'd just encountered _had_ been strong—worryingly so, compared to every other example of their respective species that he'd ever had the poor luck to meet. If there _were_ others monsters here the odds were good that _they_ would be just as strong.

That certainly didn't bode well for his little band.

And even less so for the Tree.

—

Their concerns only proved to be well founded when they finally found the resident Sproutling. It greeted them with far more clarity than most Sproutlings seemed to possess, then told them about a large monster that was coming to drain the Tree's energy. No, it didn't think it was here _yet_, but there were other, smaller monsters already lurking in the Sanctuary that were doing much the same.

It was an automatic response by now for Elazul to simply pivot in tandem with Rei and head for the next part of the Sanctuary, weapons out and ready to deal with those monsters foolish enough to lay siege to the symbol of their world.

Including the first ambush, nine of the platforms had creatures on them for the group to fight. Rei sent a mental apology to Fuzzbucket at home when she dealt the ending blow to an older relative of his, a Gray Ox that came close to disemboweling both herself and Elazul with horns scraped to wicked points. Spark showed no hesitation at fighting beside them even when the ninth platform held three of his own cousins—a Baby, Sky, and Land Dragon that did a fair chunk of damage to all parties involved.

Nor were they allowed to recover after that skirmish; the moment that the last scale vanished into thin air, so did the three companions, caught up by an implacable swirl of magic that deposited them neatly somewhere else. Somewhere vastly different from where they had just been standing.

Together, Elazul and Rei stared around them at the seemingly-endless stretch of water that surrounded them with identical expressions of disbelief. The soft violet of deepest twilight, the water's mirror-smooth surface barely betrayed any ripples around their feet even as the open space in the middle reflected a vast, single moon glowing fat and full.

It was impossible to tell if the area so far above their heads was sky or ceiling, even with the thin clouds veiling the edges of the moon hanging low on the visible horizon. And there _was_ horizon here, unlike the spaces where Drakonis and the Lord of Jewels had met their ends—ringed here and there with what looked like the uppermost branches of the Mana Tree itself in the partial light.

And then they looked closer, and behind the clouds and silhouette of the Tree was not sky, but the universe full of stars.

After that realization, the flowers barely a few shades paler than the water were anticlimactic. Less than a handful of them but all were big enough that Rei could easily sit in them if she chose. Prehistoric cousins to roses that reached skyward on single stems that curved and bent, forming tiny islands in the water for ferns and mosses to throng to. And scattered in numbers fewer than the massive blooms were what looked like ordinary trees, their gnarled roots spread above the shining floor before burrowing deep.

The sheer vibrancy of the plant life shook Rei to the core. There was less light here than could be found anywhere in the Twilight Lands, and her family's library had long ago taught her what it had cost the mages of Leires to enchant the flora to flourish without the touch of the sun. Her books said that it had taken the _entire Tower's worth_ to do it, and only _that_ with the world's Mana rich and deep, the Tree still a steady presence in the flows.

A feat impossible to match in this day and age.

"I'm beginning to worry just how far in over our heads we've gotten," she murmured, mostly to herself.

Elazul heard her anyway and shot her a wry half-smile. "If you're only starting to worry _now_, then you haven't been paying enough attention."

Spark stretched out his neck and chirruped, the sound echoing back oddly, almost distorted in the way it rippled through the quiet. The young dragonet promptly hid behind Rei and expressed his unhappiness through a series of clicks and whistles. She patted him on the head absently and blew out a long breath. "If it makes you feel any better, I think I might know where we are," the knife-fighter offered.

Elazul tilted his head towards her to show he was listening, never taking the brunt of his attention off of their surroundings. She could almost hit him for it, considering where they were. Did he really expect a monster to attack them _here_, of all places?

"'Laz...there isn't going to be a monster. If I'm right, and I'm betting I am, there's only going to be one being here other than us, and that's the Goddess Herself."

Well. _That_ was a color she'd never gotten him to turn before—sort of palish, ashen pink, like his face hadn't known whether to pale or go red or what and had gotten itself stuck in the middle of all of them. He stared at her with his jaw half-unhinged for almost an entire minute before he seemed to snap out of it, and even then it took another few moments before he got anything out of his throat. "Are you _serious_?" he squeaked.

Rei nodded. "I read about an inner Sanctuary in one of my family's books in my study. Very few people ever got to see it, and no one described it the same way twice, but...This is it. I'm sure of it."

"And if you're wrong, and there _is_ that large monster that the Sproutling we left behind spoke of?"

She gave him a lop-sided shrug. "You've had plenty of practice with 'I told you so'."

That won her an involuntary snort of laughter from her Jumi companion as his hand relaxed around the hilt of his sword at last. "That's true enough, I suppose. Though now what, I wonder."

"Your guess is as good as mine," she told Elazul, and gestured for Spark to stay where he was while she went to go check out the nearest of those prehistoric flowers. She had barely gotten five feet when a pressure wave of Mana rolled over them, sending the Jumi leaping forward to catch a certain wobbling sprite before her buckling knees dropped her into the water.

Her eyes were wide and unseeing, her instinctive clutch at his shoulder barely there at all in strength, too caught up in the crooning spell of a woman's voice that echoed from everywhere and nowhere all at once. _"I am the light. I am the darkness. Half of myself is what you have fought in the past. I create, I destroy, and I create again. I...am...love. Not all of me is just. Not all of me is pure. That is only half of myself. Those who desire my other half cross their swords. People's freedom is lost and my truth is buried."_ The pressure thickened, nearly pushing Elazul to his knees and dropping Rei to hers despite the grip he had on the golden-haired sprite.

"Rei!"

Around them, the voice spoke on. Beautiful. Implacable. _"I shall show you my darkness. You must defeat me. You will become a hero. Open the path to those who search for me."_

Rei wasn't being pushed or forced down, Elazul had a brief moment to notice. She was trying to fold herself down into a genuflection he hadn't seen anywhere but inside history books on ancient culture, forehead pressed to the backs of her hands with her hair spilled into the water around them. Words spilled with equal abandon from her lips, some of which the young Knight recognized as the language of Rei's Tribe.

That was when Elazul decided even if Rei was praying, enough was enough, and dragged her upright by the back of her outfit just in time to avoid a ball of overwhelming power coalescing in the spot where she had just been. He hustled them both back a few more steps for good measure, trying not to trip on the dragonet pressing himself against their legs as he screeched his terror.

The air flashed blue, flashed gold, and then blazed into white, leaving an afterimage of the Tree in miniature dancing across Elazul's retinas. Rei was straight and blinking beside him as though she was only now just waking to the danger—he had to suppress the ridiculous urge to shake her until her teeth rattled, leftover habits from long years with Pearl rearing their heads—and suddenly staring at a point in front of them.

Elazul turned in time to catch sight of the being phasing into existence not ten feet from them and felt his skin go cold.

Her form was monstrously beautiful. Clad in a leotard made of a single violet bloom, curves swelled those places marked with black swathes and golden stamens. Long silken hair writhed across Her shoulders in tandem with the broad leaves spreading out behind Her in a dangerous mockery of wings or a peacock's tail, purples and greens mixing with every heartbeat of time. Her skin was bark, caramel brown and glossy...and Her face was shrouded behind a cruel visage of bone, glaring fierce and frightening at those who had entered Her sanctum.

"Rei?" Elazul tightened his grip on his sword, drew it free from its sheath with barely more than a hiss of enchanted stone on leather.

She was right beside him, knives in her hands gleaming bright as the moonlight. "Yes, 'Laz?"

"I bloody well told you so."

Rei sighed, and steeled herself to battle the living symbol of everything her family had sworn to protect ages ago. "Yes, 'Laz, you did."

The Darkling Goddess set hooved feet against glimmering water and charged.

Spark _snarled_, launching himself airborne in tandem with Rei while Elazul went low, sword lashing out at their opponent without a moment's hesitation. He was not going to disobey a command from the very life-source of their world, especially when his life and those of his friends were on the line. She wanted them to defeat Her? So be it.

Rei, on the other hand, was having problems. Not only was she fighting against the Goddess Herself, but the sheer intensity of the Mana unleashed here was making her do so half-blinded by swirling colors that she was pretty sure existed only in her head. Despite the earlier overload that had fuzzed her magical senses to cotton. It wasn't even including all of the odd little flickers and whispers she was catching at the edges of her senses, distracting her at crucial moments.

Elazul saw her faltering but could do nothing, too busy keeping his head on his shoulders and his core undamaged against whiplash-quick talons that wounded the air itself with every swing. He caught glimpses of her around the Goddess with each dodge, green eyes squinted and almost entirely unfocused, sweat already dripping off her nose to join the treacherous footing beneath them.

When green leaves wrapped forward around the lithe form they were fighting, Elazul's hoarse yell of warning gave the others enough time to scatter to the farthest edges of their bizarre arena. Just enough as a new form emerged from the shroud of leaves, golden-masked and crowned with amethyst petals where hair had been. A cloak of deep purple fluttered as a golden hand was raised, displayed a crimson hem and wickedly-sharp nails in tandem before they were eclipsed by a lightning-wrapped ball of green-black energy.

The explosion when the sphere landed where they had been fighting but moments ago was impressive, flinging up a ring of water easily as wide as Rei's own bedroom in a wall fit to bury either mortal if they had still been in its path and shattering the floor's reflections.

_Reflections_...Rei dashed the sweat out of her eyes and caught the tail end of a whispered warning, her eyes being drawn to the reflection of the moon marred by flickering hooves. An image that was being slowly, steadily devoured by shadow. _An eclipse!_

"Elazul, the moon! It's eclipsing!"

The Knight spared a heartbeat to glance down, already reengaged in the fight, and let out several curses that Rei hadn't realized he knew. His efforts increased, aided by a certain dragonet's tail that caught at the legs of the Goddess and spun Her until She dizzied.

Rei let out a curse of her own and snatched her panpipes from their pouch, trusting that Salamander would be able to see well enough to attack even if she couldn't. The melody that poured from her new instrument was sharp and fierce, and she could have sworn she felt the touch of a scaled hand on one bare shoulder; energy tingled across the scars on her back as a hissing voice told her, _"Now."_

Built-up power tore loose with a banshee shriek, echoed a moment later by the Goddess as She was caught in an detonation of flames that were on par with the energy ball She'd thrown only seconds before.

The knife-fighter flung up her knives immediately after as what looked like an armored female knight came after her with vengeance somehow writ across the face-plate, leaves transformed into floor-length tresses for the agonizing moments that the Goddess focused entirely on Rei alone.

Elazul and Spark drew their opponent back into combat with them, letting Rei catch her breath and catalogue the hits that had broken through her guard. One arm ached with what felt suspiciously like a fracture. Pink fabric and the flesh beneath was torn in several places, dripping blood from cuts that had been kept down to only moderate. _Good, _Rei thought absently to herself as she yanked her flute back out from where she'd hastily stuffed it into her belt and brought it to her lips again. _I'm not sure any of my potions are up to reattaching limbs._

And it was simply unfair that their Goddess could fight with and produce random blades at a second's notice. Wasn't nigh-limitless magical power enough?

_Apparently not_.

—

They weren't able to win before the eclipse swallowed the moonlight. In that instant, gone was armored knight and masked demons, and in their places was a creature that resembled a Faerie in build—if not in size—colored a solid cherry-blossom pink. It raised a taloned hand and screeched, and the shadowed moon glowed crimson.

None of the fighters were spared by the energy that lanced down from a single bright spot on the scarlet orb.

But that, it seemed, was Her final defiance. Rei dared a Pouncing Cat, Elazul the rapid drawing blow that he called an Iai Strike, and the Goddess wrapped herself once more in her shrouding leaves. But instead of emerging in an alternate form, She stayed hidden, and the fighters were left to stand in bemusement.

Though they did not remain that way for long. Energy began to coruscate over the cocoon of greenery as a shared vision struck the three companions of the world outside their arena. The haze of ominous clouds that had been spread above the Tree was blown apart on a spreading wave of Mana, darkness vanishing from amidst the enormous boughs and foliage of the Tree itself. And when sky and Tree glowed brightly in their proper colors, the cocoon vanished without a trace.

Rei took a breath, bracing herself for pain—and blinked when she didn't feel so much as a twinge. Pushing down her arm-guards showed her whole flesh beneath. Not so much as a scratch.

She started to turn to Elazul, opening her mouth to tell him...and left it open when a small ball of leaves came floating in on a puff of pink flowers. It landed gently in the water in front of them and promptly unfolded into a Sproutling, who grinned at them and declared, "I'm a Sproutling! I came to heal the Mana Tree!"

Elazul almost managed to stifle a twitch.

Rei bit her lip. She wanted oh, so very badly to burst into laughter, but she knew perfectly well that she owed Elazul for dragging him into the biggest fight of their lives, bar none and laughing at him would be a poor way to start repaying him. (Though judging by the sideways glance he was giving her, he fully expected her to fall into a fit of the giggles.) Instead, she just leaned against him as the adrenaline they'd been running on for most of the afternoon began to drain away along with the suffocating blanket of Mana. "Don't bother yelling at it, 'Laz. It's just doing what it believes needs doing."

Said little green construct was making straight for one of the larger tree roots curving while humming a cheerful little tune. It ducked under the gnarled arch—and disappeared from view.

"Ah-hah," the Jumi youth sighed, reaching up absently to pat her head in wordless reply. "The exit. Thank goodness. It was starting to feel claustrophobic in here, somehow." He slanted a tired smile of his own down at her. "Well, since it looks like Xan never made it up this far after all, what say we go find him and tell him what he's missed?"

"You go on ahead without me, okay?" was his friend's response as she turned her head to look up at the clearing moon. "I want to stay here and pray for a little while."

Elazul blinked. "Are you sure?"

A nod. "Yeah. Take Spark with you if you like." The dragonet was all for this idea of leaving the large space. He flitted over to the root-door in question and perched on the knotted surface, hissing and trilling in an urgent request to go back to real sky.

The Jumi Knight hesitated for a few heartbeats longer...and then shrugged, remembering that even if Rei herself wasn't a formal Priestess, she was still standing in the literal center of her people's religion. He told her that he would meet her down by the Tree's roots where they'd first climbed and headed for the exit.

There was silence for a few moments after he left...and then came the soft noise of bare feet on water. Rei turned around with a half-smile and sank to one knee, bowing her head before the one now standing before her.

"You needn't be so formal," a woman's voice chided with gentle amusement. "Come now, we can't have a proper conversation with you all the way down there." Slender fingers that were pale as milk and softer still curved under Rei's chin with the barest hint of pressure, urging the knife-fighter onto her feet. "There now," smiled the woman as green eyes met warm violet, "that's better, isn't it?"

The woman—or rather, the Goddess—was dressed now in cloth instead of bark, a teal gown that poured down Her body with panels of elaborately-embroidered white on the sides, though the back trailed longer than the front. Bare toes peeked out at the front hem, splayed for balance on the wet floor. Teal circled a graceful column of throat while white circled proud shoulders in a brief hint of sleeves. Rei saw her own gloves echoed on the Goddess' own arms, and the generous froth of chestnut half-curls were mostly pinned up by a crown of ivory flowers.

"Well, daughter," smiled the Mana Goddess, "it's nice to be able to see you face to face at last, instead of sending whispers through dreams."

_Nine centuries ago, the Mana Tree burned to ashes..._

_ Take this sword, close your eyes, and imagine..._

"That was you!" Rei burst out, remembering those snatches of dreams that had never failed to leave her more tired or off kilter than when she'd gone to sleep, and the time when she had gone searching in the land of dreams for her poor lost Sproutling. The voice was the same, rich, beautiful and full of affectionate warmth. "All this time, that was _you_!"

A slight dip of the regal head. "Yes. I apologize if they were confusing but I didn't have the strength for anything more. Nine hundred years beyond My realm have allowed Me to heal but did very little for My Powers, you see." One pale hand clad in teal fabric gestured towards the nearest of the earthen knolls. "But please, come sit with Me. You have had a very long journey. You must be tired."

Understatement of the century. After the trip from home to Etansel to here, between her spell backlashing, the Mana overload, the long climb and the fierce battle with senses nearly drowned in power, Rei's request for a few moments up here had been for more than simply praying. She was _exhausted_.

But not so exhausted that she didn't have the energy to note that the flowers she'd wanted to investigate earlier glowed like lamps in the presence of their Creator. It was a very soothing kind of light, almost like looking out of her upstairs window at evening time.

The Goddess seated Herself on a gnarled, moss-laden root with a careful twitch of skirts, mouth set in a wry smile as though She was still getting used to so much cloth. She waited until Rei had settled before speaking again, voice still the same warm music it had been since the end of the battle. "Rei, I know you have so many questions. I know that you've wondered why all of these strange, wonderful, painful things have happened to you. Why you're always there in the middle of them, participating and observing and doing your best to help." Rosy lips bent into a more sympathetic curve as the knife-fighter startled, staring at Her in shock. "I also know it hasn't been at all easy for you. But all I am able to tell you is that it is because little Esmeralda named you truer than any realized when she dubbed you a Knight."

Rei blinked. Tilted her head to one side amidst the jingle of her hair-ornaments. "That's impossible, isn't it? There are only two kinds of knights, the ones that serve Irzoile the Undying Idiot and the ones who protect Jumi Guardians."

"Now, yes." Chestnut half-curls whispered in another brief nod. "But long ago there was a third kind. If you look, you'll find their name in some of your family's oldest manuscripts. I'm sorry, but I really can't tell you more. Even goddesses have to follow rules you know, like being mysterious and cryptic when they talk."

The knife-fighter found herself giggling a little at the unexpected joke, relaxing even farther in her deity's presence. "It's all right. It'll be more satisfying to learn the answer for myself, anyway."

"Perhaps. Though I can't help but wonder if you'll wish you'd remained ignorant after all..."

The murmur was so quiet that half of it was more reading lips than actual hearing, and even then Rei wasn't certain that she'd really heard right. After a moment she decided to let it go. If it turned out to be really important, well, she knew where to find the Goddess now. She could always come back and ask.

Violet eyes crinkled a little at the corners at that, making Rei wonder if her thoughts weren't written all over her face. Or if the Goddess could simply hear them clear as day.

Instead of asking that, however, Rei tilted her head the other way and asked something that had been bothering her since halfway up the Tree-trunk. "Xan's already been here, hasn't he?"

"Yes. He passed My test the same as you did, though I will admit to going a little easier on him since his only company was that cute Rabite of his. You'll see him again after you go back to the ground."

There was a pause as Rei tried to figure out what she could possibly ask next, the historian in her warring with the story-teller and both fighting against the little girl who'd been told Faerie tales ever since she could remember about a girl and a boy and a sword long, long ago. And just when she thought her control might slip, that she might start burbling nonsense just to get all of the voices in her head to _shut up_, Rei heard the Goddess speak again.

"Dear one, I'm sorry, but our time together is running out. Mortals can only stay in My Sanctuary so long before the Mana begins to wear them through." A slender hand cupped her cheek this time, bringing her gaze back into focus. "But before you go, I do have one more thing to say, and a gift to offer. I want you to know that above all else, I am proud of you and everything you have accomplished. Even when it's hurt you, left your heart bleeding and your soul in pieces, you have never faltered in restoring the light of hope to people. You have never stumbled in your tasks, and the only faith that has wavered has been in yourself. Never in Me, and never in those around you.

"And so I can grant you one gift, whatever is in My power. You need only ask for it."

It might have been habit. So much time spent worrying over him. But the first thing that popped into the knife-fighter's head on being asked that was a pair of deep blue eyes shining with glimmers of real, unfettered happiness. And what she wanted more than anything was to see them glow, _really_ shine with it, when their owner could be confident that his happiness would not be stolen away like so much of his life in the past.

"What I want...I wish..." Rei pulled her eyes away from the fingers she'd twisted together in her lap, and, to her shock, found tears running down ivory cheeks. She made a noise rather close to a squeak when she was engulfed in a hug a moment later.

"Precious, dearest child," was whispered into her ear, "can you not, even now, think only of yourself?"

"Well, no," the golden-haired sprite admitted sheepishly. "It's just not the way I am. Besides," she added, gently nudging the Goddess upright again so she could wipe away crystalline (but thankfully not _crystal_) tears with the fabric of her gloves, "seeing Elazul really and truly happy is honestly the thing I want most. He's worked so hard and so long, he deserves it. Whether or not he's happy with me."

There was a heartbeat of silence before low, rich laughter bubbled up from the Goddess. With a bright smile despite Her tears, the immortal woman leaned forward and pressed a hand to Rei's sternum even as Her lips pressed against Rei's forehead in benediction.

Power rushed in from nowhere, flooding through the sprite's veins until her bones sang with it. Voices pulsed from within the unseen river, _"need a map/you stand accused/how have you been?/don't think the originals were built for this"_ and on.

As darkness pulled her down, one voice soothed her way like a lullaby, rich and just a little mischievous. _"Maybe you should try kissing him."_

—

Feathered arms caught the unconscious sprite before she could tilt back more than a couple of inches, a small half-smile lurking around the edges of a long yellow beak. "I've been meaning to tell her that for years," Pokiehl told the Goddess with no little amusement as he settled their younger champion in his arms. She never stirred, Mana busily forging new paths under her skin, not even when pale fingers reached out to gently brush strands of gold from her forehead. "She would never listen to me on matters of the heart, perhaps, You know how stubborn children are. But You? You, she might listen to."

"Of course." Deep rose pink curved into a wry smile. "Mothers know these things and are far more trustworthy than some eccentric old bird."

Pokiehl clacked his beak in reproof. "You wound me, My Lady."

"If only," rumbled another voice. Rosiotti padded forward in the dim light, Xan a boneless sprawl across the muscled fur of his back. The Jungle lord gave Pokiehl a measured look before tipping his head up to the Goddess with a care for the caramel ball of fluff perched between his horns. "By all means, Lady, feel free to abuse him to Your heart's content. He enjoys being mysterious entirely too much."

"This one would agree with you, no doubt." Pokiehl smiled down at his armful of unconscious sprite. "She has never followed the paths of philosophy like her brother. But come, let us away. The day passes as we linger here, as does the mortality of these two."

The Mana Goddess dipped Her head in a nod and reached up to brush fingertips against feathered brows and deer-like horns in blessing. "Go safely and well, and watch over them."

"Lady." The two Wisdoms bowed and vanished, leaving behind an empty copse and a full moon reflected on water.

—

Elazul had been expecting a few things when he reached true solid ground again with Spark on restless orbit around his head. For Xan to be waiting for him and Rei, yes. To be beaten within an inch of his life for ever letting Rei lose hers, most certainly. He prayed—quietly—that a beating would be the worst he could expect with maybe a thorough chewing out afterwards. Rei _was _alive and well, after all, despite all her attempts to the contrary, and if Elazul was lucky she'd catch up before Xan got into the more painful parts of Elazul's beating.

That part he wasn't expecting, but he was hoping quite hard that she would. Rei in full blazing temper was a frightening thing. Xan in the same state was bound to be _terrifying_.

But instead of a new set of bruises waiting for him when he stepped at last from root to firm earth, he found instead two Wisdoms and both Venstry siblings, the latter quite firmly out cold—Rei for the second time this afternoon.

Spark was a squawking golden shadow at his heels as he rushed forward with his heart in his throat yet again, unreassured by the rise and fall of chests. Warm flesh met his touch with Rosiotti a calm rumble in his ears. "Peace, boy," the Jungle lord grumbled, not unkindly, as Elazul's hands smoothed golden bangs from sweat-damp skin and stuttered to a halt at an unexpected discovery. "They have received a blessing and a gift from the Goddess Herself. They only sleep as their new gifts settle."

Elazul wasn't paying much attention to him, too busy tracing a delicate path around the edge of a five-petaled blossom glowing ivory-pale across Rei's forehead, no bigger than his thumbnail and—he swiped the pad of his thumb across the mark—very much a part of her now.

Mana fizzed up towards his wrist at the touches, sparking playfully in what felt like recognition.

Two seconds later Rei was dropped into his arms by a beaming Pokiehl, whose only comment was, "Here, Elazul, you hold her. I'll pop ahead and let her apprentices know what to expect, hmm?"

"Better you than he, I wager," Rosiotti huffed as the feathered Bard vanished from sight. The red-furred Beast let a few moments pass in silence as Elazul hastily shifted his armful of sprite so that the jewels on his gauntlet wouldn't dig in uncomfortably, and then rumbled, "I hope you know a transport spell, lad. It's been too long since I've set foot within the gate of Haven Tree Cottage and I might land us in the well or somesuch. If you don't I'm afraid we're in for a long walk."

The Jumi youth blinked. Eyed how big Rosiotti was, Spark's size, the watching Shard, and the two unconscious sprites, and hesitated. "I don't know if I have enough power to get us there."

A toothy grin. "If it's only the energy you're worried about, don't. The Tree and the Goddess have returned to us at last. We stand on the edge of a wave that will wash over the whole of Fa'Diel. Plenty more Mana than you're used to, lad."

Elazul looked down at shuttered, dusty gold lashes and sighed. If he couldn't trust a Wisdom to tell him the truth about Fa'Diel's Mana, then he was in even more trouble than just having to worry about Xan when the swordsman woke. With a wordless prayer, the Knight reached out with a mental hand wreathed in Mana, and _pulled. _

—

_She had been told that these passages were gloomy. And maybe they were to the shades who wandered here in their state of between. But to her and her husband these were only passages. Tunnels carved into strange stones with stranger decorations worked into the walls, but simple passages nonetheless. _

_ And as such they were fair game to any heart sturdy enough to go without the sun's touch for days at a time._

_ It did help that her husband was as enthusiastic about this idea of hers as she was. They'd already walked the breadth of their portion of the world, from eastern shore to western, knew almost every tree as well as they knew each other's faces and still had a good century left in which to explore and live. They had already made plans to sail to the Western Continent as soon as one of the local heroes got around to dealing with that pesky water-wyrm wreaking havoc along the shipping lanes._

_ But in the meantime, she and her husband were _bored_. They needed something to do. _

_ Which would be why Aion, deposed King of the Faeries and Lord of the Underworld, was scowling at them over the rims of his wire-frame spectacles._

_ She gave him a beaming smile in return. "My Lord! What a pleasant surprise to see you again!"_

_ "I fear, mortal," he grumbled, "that I cannot say the same about you or your mate. This is the eighth time I have found the two of you in these tunnels in this month alone. I have begun to expect you at this point." He blinked and frowned, looking between the two of them. "What are you even _doing _down here? Both of you are quite a far cry from dead." _

_ "Getting a head start," her husband replied cheerfully as he brandished a piece of charcoal at what she thought was his fifth piece of parchment today. Scribbling in a few short lines, he added with an absentminded gesture at the ceiling, "We've explored pretty much everything that can _be_ explored at the moment up there, so we're killing time by mapping down here."_

_ "...You. Are exploring?"_

_ "And making maps," she reminded the Faerie elder, amused at the puzzled look behind circles of glass. What, did he think _everyone _shuddered in horror at the thought of being down here? "We need a map or two just to tell us where we've been. What with the way passages lead into caves lead into tunnels and all. It's a terribly inefficient way to run things, you know."_

_ The rotund little oddity floating behind Aion's shoulder muffled a snicker behind stubby almost-hands._

_ One silvery eyebrow rose, the scowl returning. "Yes, I am aware. I _am _the one who has existed here for quite some time. Several of the passages of which you speak are of my creation."_

_ Her husband grinned from where he crouched over his work. "Then when we've finished with this sector, how would you like a few maps of your kingdom, your majesty?" _

_ Slender, elegant fingers pinched at a thin blade of a nose below the glitter of wire. "You twain are of flesh and blood and still require the necessities thereof. You cannot go without food, water, or rest and therefore most certainly _do not belong_ in a realm that has been made solely for the use of the dead. _Go. Home._"_

_ The gold and jeweled splendor of the Circle was cold beneath the thin leather slippers on her feet, cold as the iron shackles clasping her wrists with implacable strength. She had stood here at the beginning of her career and spoken her vows to Tower and peers, had stood here at every milestone of her craft. _

_ It was fitting that she would stand here for the end of it all._

_ Thirteen mages—the full council of her peers—ranged before her. The man she had once counted as the closest thing to a friend their kind could have sat in the golden throne of the Archmage, six mages on their feet at either hand. Behind her stood those who had gathered to watch her downfall; the curious, the aggrieved, the few remaining who had not already severed their alliances with her._

_ The Archmage rose to his feet, signaling the start of her trial with the motion. She gazed impassively at him, peeling away the image of the storybook mage with a long, flowing beard and eyes that had seen the ages and replacing it with the face of the boy who had learned incantations with her at their master's knee. And kicked herself again for not seeing the fool that he had allowed himself to grow into. _

_ Her name and title fell from his lips and were lost in the mutterings of the crowd behind her. He raised his hand in a command for silence; kept talking after he had gotten it. Everyone here knew her, anyway. "You stand accused before we, your peers, to answer for laws of this Tower broken by your hand. What say you?"_

_ She snorted, spreading age-gnarled hands just to hear her shackles rattle in cruel emphasis. "I say you are fools for laying your blame at my feet. If you and those hidebound old turtles would poke your wrinkled noses outside your laboratories once in a while—"_

_ The Archmage's voice cracked like a whip, slicing through her rant before she could build up a proper head of steam. "The subject of this hearing is not the intelligence of this council or the lack of it that you perceive in us. You are accused by your fellow mages of interfering in a Tower-wide project, the result of which is corruption of any further information and the outright ruin of several lifetimes' worth of research and study. The evidence gathered supports this accusation. If you wish to claim innocence, this is your final chance to do so."_

_ "Why bother?" she answered with another shrug. "It's simple enough to say it. Yes. I have changed the land," she raised her voice as loud as it could go over the tumult that had broken out at her blunt confession, "and I did it _for_ the land, you blind fools. Thought it was a grand idea to still the sky at twilight and channel the Mana from our cheated sun into your reservoirs, didn't you? Fifty mages all told it took to cast that spell, and none of you good for anything else for weeks after. And meanwhile crops and grasslands withered, the creatures of field and farms dying or fled."_

_ She raised her voice louder with what little magic she had left, riding over protests and demands for order. "An entire ecosystem on the brink of ruin for your petty pleasure, and naught that we few left who still work with herb or waters could say of it that you'd hear. Too busy playing your childish games of Divinity."_

_ One of those gathered behind her stepped forward, his hands crooked into enraged talons. He had been the one to start this whole mess, him and his insidious suggestion of 'wouldn't it be fascinating if we did _this_?'. "That's it?" he demanded, barely able to make himself heard. "You ruined all of our efforts for a bunch of weeds and _vermin_?"_

_ "Yes, you little twit." She gestured outwards as much as her iron tethers would allow. "Use the brain you claim you have. We are living, breathing beings who cannot live on dew and moonlight. If the crops die, _we starve_. So what does that make you, boy, that I have saved you? Are you weed or vermin?"_

_ "You _dare—_"_

_ "MAGI!" The Archmage's voice thundered through the room, magically enhanced as she had made hers. His face was red with temper as he gestured at them all. "You will show proper decorum for this trial or you will leave and return to your studies! You—" and he pointed at the twit, "will restrain yourself from further outbursts or I will personally turn you into a rock. And as for _you—_" he pointed at her, still unrepentant, "—_you _will cease provoking your peers while we stand at your trial."_

_ "Why should me being on trial change my behavior?"_

_ He ignored her. He'd gotten good at it over the years, stubborn old codger. "You have admitted your guilt and thus our decision is clear. Before we announce your sentence, however, I have one last point I would have clarified. You said you changed the land. How?"_

_ Hmph. Nice to know he had enough brains to pay attention _sometimes_. She just wished he'd done it a great deal sooner. "I cannot return the sunlight to the land. I am a biomancer, not a weather-worker. But I _can _change plants."_

_ Several mages—all of them older, experienced ones—murmured briefly amongst themselves at that, turning appraising eyes on a body gnarled by the passing of decades. A body that still stood tall and proud against the weight of all those years on her bony shoulders. "You have changed _all_ of the plants within the radius of the original spell?" one inquired. When she nodded, the other frowned. "Impossible. There has been no evidence that any other mage in this Tower or any other has helped you and such a spell is beyond your abilities alone."_

_ An eerie, ululating wail rose through the air from outside Leires, crooking her mouth into a wry smile. "Now, when did I _ever_ say I did it alone?"_

_ She only had eyes for the Archmage, watching him as his face went pale beneath his beard. "What have you done?" he asked softly, fear in his eyes for the answer._

_ Her smile gentled now at the last, turned sorrowful, but with no hint of regret. "The Faeries have never left the heartbeat of the land, old friend. What did you _think _was going to happen after you did your best to smother it?"_

_ It had been many years since the First War. He could count the eras by them if he tried. The War of the Mana Tree. The War of Eyes. The Artifact War, sometimes called the Faerie Wars, still ongoing as mage fought against mage, Faerie against human-kind for the power of Mana renewed after the rebirth of the second Tree. Sometimes it seemed that war was all that he knew. _

_ Well, he amended to himself with a chuckle, perhaps he'd learned a _few_ other things in his years as a wanderer. Such as how to use the flows of Mana to see the world after a battle had stolen the sight from his eyes. He turned his head towards the sounds of approaching footsteps and grinned. "Halciet."_

_ A warm laugh reached his ears as his fellow wanderer and battle-mage stopped a few feet away from his perch. "It always surprises me when you do that."_

_ "But it's fun," he mock-whined, playfully tapping the heel of his staff against his current seat. "Are you trying to tell me I should stop?" _

_ Halciet's laughter blended with Gaeus' own, both nearly drowned by the sound of grating stone as the living hill lowered his massive hand down to the ground. "Goddess forbid I deny you one of your few pleasures, my friend."_

_ "Should hope so." An imperious gesture with one hand. "C'mere, it's been a while. How have you been?"_

_ "Busy," the older man admitted. "Tired."_

_ He could tell. The peculiar Sight he'd learned to use years ago showed him the other man's weariness in the way green rivulets of energy flowed dull and sluggish in the translucent crystal of Halciet's flesh. He stood, reaching out and finding warm, living skin under his palm, felt the way Halciet gratefully leaned into the contact. "I've heard. The stories from the battlefield say that you went toe-to-toe with Anuella herself."_

_ A shudder. "Don't remind me. It ended up as a giant mess and you would have hated every minute of it. I know I certainly did."_

_ He patted the mage's cheek and sat down again, beckoning for Halciet to join him on the warm rock of Gaeus' hand. "That's why you're here instead of back in that rat's nest camp, listening to those fools bicker amongst themselves for more power. And, no doubt, for some advice in hiding that little ball of sunshine in your front pocket."_

_ Crystal fingers moved to cover the lump in the pocket of a worn traveling coat, a lump that shone bright and warm to eyes that could only see Mana, and fell away with a rueful laugh. "Damn, but I wish I knew how you do that."_

_ "Magic," he quipped. _

_ Halciet laughed again and dropped onto the stone beside him with the mage's energies picking up into a shining stream as he watched. "It's good to be home," the older man sighed after a moment, and felt a callused hand squeeze his shoulder in agreement._

_ The wards of Etansel thrummed. She would protect her children as best as she could, whether it be from the army approaching from across the burning sands or from the one camped at her shuttered gates. It was what she was made for._

_ He stood on the ramparts of the wall diving the Clarius Tier from the ones below and looked out towards their oncoming doom. There would be many mages in that army, thirsting for the Mana held in his people's cores or for that thrice-damned stone that everyone seemed convinced his people had. _

_ The army below belonged to Etansel. Was made up of Jumi, those who had taken up the mantle of Knight and the Guardians sworn to them. It was augmented by humans, some of whom were even mages that didn't rely on the cores of his murdered kindred to power spells, and Faeries, which honestly surprised the hell out of him. When did Faeries bother to tell the difference between different types of humans, let alone Jumi? _

_ Well. They were here now and for that he was grateful._

_ "Out here again?" asked a quiet voice from behind him. He suppressed his initial reaction of wanting to whirl with his sword drawn by the narrowest of margins; jumpy as he was, it was considered poor manners to pull a weapon on one's twin. "Staring at them won't make them arrive any faster. Or slower."_

_ "I know." He turned and gave his brother a wry and unhappy _chink_ from his core to go along with the twisted mockery of a smile. "It's just...I'm sick of waiting. Sick of people treating us like mobile batteries that double as pretty baubles. I want this to be _over_. I want our city to be peaceful again."_

_ Warm arms enveloped him from behind, smooth stone a comfort against his spine. "Me, too. But we have help now. We'll survive even with an army coming for us."_

_ "But what if the walls or wards can't withstand the attack? I don't think the originals were built for this. Not on this scale."_

_ His brother's core chimed reassurance at him, easing a deep-rooted feeling of despair he hadn't even realized had taken hold. "Well, then it's a good thing we aren't working with _just_ the original wards, isn't it? Listen." Hands that lacked his sword-calluses guided him back down to sun-warm stone and prompted a joint chime from their twinned cores. _

_ Light bloomed behind his eyes as Etansel immediately responded with a litany of names. Each one belonged to someone who had given of themselves to strengthen their beloved city; Malachi and Selene were only the first and most worn of them. Every Jumi who had any talent at all for the arcane arts had built onto the protections that had been laid down with the city's foundation to the point that it was said that after so many years of dwelling here there was a name for every stone._

_ He listened to Etansel croon the names of her people and let his despair fall away entirely. Yes, there would always be those who would rather steal another's strength than stand on their own. Yes, the Jumi would always be desired for their cores, for the restorative tears that they could shed, for every gift that Gnome and the Goddess had blessed them with that had not been granted to another race._

_ But they were of earth, of stone. And like stone, even if they were broken, they would endure._

—

In a place that had once been empty of anything but the name of Fa'Diel there had grown a world to replace the void. People had walked the length and breadth of it, learning its terrains, finding those places vibrant with life and those places that Fa'Diel had feared lost to time altogether.

Amidst the resewn quilt of stories that made the land there was a tall tree growing on a small hill with a cottage built snug against its trunk. There were more than a few of Fa'Diel's stories seeped into aged beams and hanging from sheltering branches with the summer leaves, for Haven Tree Cottage had watched many generations of lore-keepers and adventurers born and grown beneath its golden crown of thatch.

For with every generation had come the tales of the world beyond the little hill, told and retold to each new life and written down in the books it held protected.

And the Cottage was content. For it had everything it needed to take care of the lives it sheltered. It had a garden and a well. It had a barn and corral for smaller lives, those that grew and fought alongside its family. It had a set of workshops to keep idle hands occupied during the months of snows.

And most importantly of all, it had a dreamer.

A dreamer who awoke to sunlight pouring across polished wooden floorboards and birds singing carillons to the morning sun, and wondered if all of it had been a dream. "That's it," the dreamer mumbled to the little cactus sitting in a pot by the hearth, "I don't care how good they taste or how hot it gets during summer. No more fruit smoothies before bed."

"Smoothies," agreed the little cactus with an impressive amount of cheer for the early hour.

She paused in the act of swinging her feet off the edge of the bed, struck by a nagging sense of déjà vu. "Waaiiit a minute..."

The cactus merely beamed at her and squeaked, "Awake!" at the tops of its chlorophyllic little lungs.

There had been movement downstairs until that moment, movement she hadn't registered until it went silent. It was replaced in a heartbeat by a rush of footsteps as someone bolted up the stairs to the second floor. Wide violet eyes in a young Elf's face peered around the banister, lighting up at the sight of her peering out at the morning. "Master Rei!" came the relieved squeal as the pink-haired girl flung herself across the room and wrapped the dreamer into an energetic hug. "You're awake! How do you feel?"

"Strange," was her admittance, returning the hug as memories began to slot themselves back into their proper places with the voicing of her name. "Like my head's a glass full of fog."

She knew this girl-child. This Elven girl had a sharp wit and sharper tongue when it pleased her, needed work on closing defensive holes around her right shoulder, and made an apple-sock and peach-puppy cobbler that was quite frankly addicting. There was an herb garden somewhere below that belonged to this girl who wanted more than anything to be a healer-mage.

But she _could not remember_ the child's name. There was still too much in the way, the fragmented dreams of what-had-been were a thick barrier of dust and cobweb between the past and now.

Her...student?...didn't seem to notice the lack, only tightening the hug for a moment or two longer before letting go. "Rosiotti said that there might be some side effects from the Goddess' blessing. That's probably it. How do you feel otherwise?"

Rei wiggled her toes and thought a moment. "Like I've been in bed too long."

"_That's_ because you've been asleep for five days."

"Fi...!? Why have I been asleep for _five days_?!"

"Because the Goddess gave you a gift and Her blessing," a new voice said from the by the stairs, this one male, older, and liberally dosed with relief and irritation. "And then _you_ nearly gave _me_ a heart attack. _Again_. When Rosiotti and Pokiehl met me at the bottom of the Tree with you unconscious in their arms."

"And Xan," her apprentice chimed in helpfully. "He's asleep in our room."

Rei had stopped listening by this point. She was too busy staring at the newest arrival in her bizarre morning—all near-six-feet of him—drinking in the sight of tanned arms bare of armor or adornment, deep blue core shining bright and whole in the early sunshine. The mixture of relief and annoyance in eyes just as blue were ignored in favor of reminding herself of their shapes, of the curve of the jaw, the color of sandstone lips.

_I love you_.

It rang through her unimpeded and louder than Domina's church bells, whatever thoughts she had used to chain it before still lost amidst the shards of her memory. And in this moment she knew the emotion better than her own name: a rush of joy at seeing him whole and sound, of affection, of desire all mixed up until it blended into one thought, three simple words.

_I love you!_

Chimes sang in her ears as light rippled out from beneath her shirt.

She blinked, peering down at her hands to reaffirm that they belonged to the life that went with this cozy little cottage and not a war-scarred youth's, barely registering a responding echo from a lazuli core and the flummoxed expression that accompanied it. Instead, she hooked a finger beneath the threadbare collar of her shirt and squinted curiously beneath.

"...I'm still a little muddled, but I don't remember having this before," she said after a long moment's study.

Tanned hands were suddenly there, shooing hers away to tear a careful rip down the front of her shirt with a rather adorable frown of concentration on the young man's face. She stifled the urge to smooth the lines on his forehead with her thumb, and watched him instead as the frown vanished into a bloom of shock when his ministrations laid bare the oval curves of a Jumi's core growing from the flesh over her sternum. A core clear as first snowmelt and the warm gold of a summer afternoon's honeyed sunlight.

Elazul glanced up at her for permission before he ran a hesitant fingertip along one edge, too absorbed in the sight of it to notice the shudder that ran through her at the touch that seemed to reach all the way down to her soul. Nor did he notice the blink when his name locked itself back into its place in Rei's heart with a firm click. "It's real," he breathed, sitting back on his haunches. "But...how?"

_A woman in white sitting beside her in the glow of a single full moon. "Our cores shine brightly..."_ More memories from her life now. More pieces of herself settling themselves into their proper places. A tilt of her head. "I made a wish."

"A wish?" he repeated, brows drawing back down into his customary scowl. "What kind of wish?"

"Seriously?" a second, much younger male voice butted in. "Are you _seriously _that dense?"

The two adults startled and twisted around to stare towards the banister where Lisa had lost her fight to keep her brother from interrupting. Rei grinned in the face of Bud's glare as the names of her students shelved themselves neatly back into place and blushed when he added, "You've known our teacher for three years and you have to _ask_? Aura's ti—"

"Bud!" Scandalized, Lisa clapped both hands over her twin's mouth.

He glared, yanked them away, and finished with a sour, "—tiny golden crown. You're _hopeless_, Lazuli." And then he stomped out of sight downstairs, hands flung up in a gesture of utter disgust.

Elazul twisted back to Rei, scowl lost to confusion. "What is he talking about?"

"That you even have to ask," she told him with no little resigned amusement, "means that you really are hopeless, 'Laz."

The Jumi Knight, however, did not share in her amusement. "Rei, I don't understand! Why would you make a wish to be a Jumi? Have you forgotten how dangerous our lives are even without Sandra? This will just—"

Rei sighed to herself, wondering what would be the best way to put the brakes on Elazul's rant and get the real nature of her wish through his stubborn, thick head. That was when one last shard of her dreams—or maybe it was a memory—spoke before it joined the rest in the shadows of forgetting. It was a woman's voice, rich and a little mischievous that sounded kind of like how she remembered her mother talking, and it gave her six little words. _"Maybe you should try kissing him."_

Sounded like it might work. Maybe then she could get a word in edgewise.

Her fingers tangling themselves in the silk of his vest did little more than slow him down—at least until she used her grip to pull him up and met his lips halfway with her own. That was when his words stuttered out into wide eyes and complete stillness beneath her hands. _At least I will always have this_, Rei thought to herself in a corner of her mind worried about what would happen after while the rest of her was too busy carving this moment into her heart. And then she pulled back, giving her frozen captive a gentle shake of admonishment. "You, idiot," she told him, putting as much of her feelings into her words as she could. "My wish was _you_. I want you to be _happy_. I want to grow old watching you _be_ happy. _She_ was the one who decided that I would be a Jumi to do it. Got it?"

There was a long, long moment where Elazul just stared at her with his hands frozen where they had landed on her shoulders and his jaw on the floor. It lasted so long that Rei started to worry she had broken more than possibly the man's brain, that she'd gone so far as to maybe break the relationship she'd already had with him. She tilted her head warily, repeating 'got it?' one more time just to make sure he'd heard it.

And then those blue, blue eyes lit up like the sunrise. "Got it," sandstone lips murmured huskily as she was drawn so very willingly into a second, deeper kiss.

There was music in the back of her head. It was riotous, a thing of crescendos and grand flourishes that shouted happiness for anyone to hear. Rei felt her mouth curving into a smile to match as she kissed the one she loved most, wrapping her arms around him to catch her fingers in long silken hair and letting her core ring out in echo of the sheer, unrestrained joy.

_CHING!_

The two paused at a muffled yelp and a thud, turning their heads towards the screen that hid Bud and Lisa's room. "Um, Xan, are you alright?" came the muffled voice of Pearl. Lisa was nowhere to be seen.

"Reiii?" Xan called out in confusion a moment later from what sounded like floor-level. "Why'm I in _your_ room? What am I doing on the _floor_?" A pause. "And who's the pretty girl?"

"You're fine," Pearl sighed in a familiar tone of resignation.

Elazul and Rei turned back to each other, shared a look, and fell into a laughter-flavored kiss.

—

On to the Epilogues!


	37. Epilogue

—

The Headmaster of the Academy of Geo sat at his nice, big sturdy desk and considered throwing it across the room. _Everyone_ seemed to be sending him letters lately, and it wasn't just requests for enrollment or duel challenges or anything interesting. No, there was one for the re-formed Order of Gemma Knights reminding him that their next meeting was coming up—boring—one from his delightful niece who no doubt had sent him a letter full of plant-babble—shudder—and the one that was currently inciting his wish for destruction of property.

Just a neat roll of very nice parchment, sealed with the golden ribbon and stamp of Etansel's branch of Venstrys. As if he couldn't guess who had written him. Only one of his adopted siblings bothered to use his full name in a letter without having one hell of a rant behind it, and quite frankly he was wondering when Nic would get that damned stick out and _relax_.

Sighing, he tossed his niece's letter and the one from the Knights off to one side, stuffed the rest under the Seventh Moon currently disguised as a sparkly paperweight—_hm, really need to find another place to put that..._—and tore off the ribbon to the letter from his oldest adopted brother.

_'To Headmaster Budralyn Ancaladon-Venstry, greetings from—' _"Yeah, yeah, kid, I know who you _are_, sheesh." His little brother took waaaay too much after Elazul, Goddess help the brat. The rest of the letter, however, dumped all of his annoyance at the wayside. _'We of Etansel are sending these letters across Fa'Diel: our mother Areinne Venstry, Guardian of Amber, and our father Elazul, Knight of Lapis Lazuli, are missing. No one has seen or heard from them in four days. None of their things are missing—even their weapons and armor are exactly where they had been left. There are no signs of struggle in their suite of rooms, no traces of magics that might have stolen them away. It is as if they have simply vanished._

_ 'We have already written Uncle Alexander and Aunt Pearl on the Eastern Continent inquiring if they know anything and were merely told 'Look to the Tree'. Please, if you know anything, anything at all, write back as fast as you are able. Your brother, Nic.'_

His bratty brother really _was_ worried if he was dropping titles and signing with his family nickname. For once, though, Bud couldn't really blame him.

Still, Xan and Pearl's message of looking to the Tree nagged at Bud. And without thinking his hand reached out and snagged the letter from his niece, Lisa's youngest girl. Rianna was studying botany on the Tree itself and the letter was postmarked a couple days ago; maybe she'd spotted something.

She had. Didn't sound like she'd figured it out, but she had.

For there amidst chatter about new herbs and uses for this-and-that was the evidence for eyes used to the impossible after more than three hundred years. _'And the Seedling's grown! Of course you know which one I'm talking about, right? There _IS_ only one baby Mana Tree growing up in the crown that we've found, after all...unless you saw another one you aren't telling us about. You haven't, have you? 'Cause that would totally not be cool if you kept it a secret. Anyway! Like I was saying, the Seedling's grown! Two whole inches this week when it hasn't grown that much in nearly a century! Of course the Gemma Knights were all 'as IF' when we tried to tell them and I guess I can't really blame them since it's never grown this fast before, but you shouldn't say 'as IF' to the person who's been studying it all her life, y'know?_

_ 'Oooh, and it's blooming, too! Just started a couple days ago, actually. You should really come see it! Such pretty little white flowers, they look like stars almost. And the Seedling—it's really more of a Sapling, now—even has its first symbiotic vine! Such a shy little thing; you can hardly see it curling around the bottom of the Sapling, but it's really there. Delouc tried to get a sample of it and the Sapling nearly zapped his hand off. Can't blame it. I wouldn't want to have _my_ partner's leaves cut. If I had a partner. It's such an odd color, though. Almost blue if you look at it right._

_ 'Anyway...' _

Bud swore loudly and colorfully, balling up his fists and shaking them at the ceiling. He'd never wanted Rei and Elazul to get together in the first place; he didn't _care_ that a couple hundred years with her had mellowed out the Jumi Knight into someone barely tolerable! What the hell was the Goddess doing sticking them together for all _eternity_?

And it looked like he would have to call the meeting of the Gemma Knights sooner than was planned. Like it or not, Fa'Diel had a brand-new mini-Goddess and he would be damned if he let anything happen to her.

_'Ware the world_, he thought irritably, reaching for parchment and quill_. Here comes trouble._

—


	38. New Game

—

It was a late summer afternoon the day the stranger arrived in Domina from the road through the western fields. His stride was broken by a limp common to those favoring blisters and every inch of him was covered in the pale tan dust of the road. In one hand were the lead-reins to a tall chocobo hen—her color indistinguishable under the same road's dust—and in the other a worn and much-folded map.

Town residents dealing with outside chores paused a moment in their work as he passed, noting the somewhat battered state of the staff holstered across the hen's saddlebags, the thin pipe-chimes strung through a band tying back a mess of half-curls. They saw the elongated oval of a stone growing from the skin over a sternum left bared by a nomad's open vest and promptly dismissed him as just another Venstry passing through.

If they had known exactly _which_ Venstry he was they might have taken at least a little more interest—if only to fuel the local gossip mill for a few days. For the young man (one Evan Venstry, Guardian of Heliodor by name and title) was none other than the reluctant clan member chosen to take up residence in the newly vacated Haven Tree Cottage.

"Alright, according to the map Rin gave us, our new place is just a few hours walk from here," said Evan, folding up his map and tucking it into a pocket in his vest. "So what'll it be, Tuft? Take a breather and keep walking or call it a day and find the inn?"

"Kweh," huffed the chocobo, who was more interested in seeing how much she could nibble from roadside vegetation than whether or not they kept going. She was a chocobo, a grasslands species, and was built for far more walking than her person.

Her person sighed and rubbed at her beak in affection with his newly-freed hand. "Bottomless pit."

Personally, Van thought they could use the break. It had been a little more than two months since Great (_"And don't you go and get started on all those 'greats', young man.")_ Auntie Lisa had decided to retire and move in with her youngest granddaughter's family in Domina. Half that since the Elders had convened and, with a measure of input from the formidable matriarch herself, chosen who would take up residence in the clan's ancestral home.

Three weeks since he'd been more or less booted out of Etansel with only what Tuft could carry and a promise that the rest of his belongings would be sent after him on the next caravan.

Van still wasn't certain why they'd chosen him. He had siblings and dozens of cousins who were adventurers, entirely gung-ho about helping people—like his ancestor Rei had been—and who had come damned close to skinning him alive when they'd found out he'd gotten the Cottage. He couldn't blame them. He was a lore-keeper, a book-worm. Yeah, he took the occasional trip to Geo for books, scrolls, or anything written he could get his hands on for his private library, but he was of the opinion that if trouble felt like happening it could very well come to him.

After all, it wasn't like there was any shortage of Venstrys, Jumi or otherwise, out in the world these days. Why should trouble bother him when there were so many of his relatives that were _more_ than happy to jump on any problem they found?

He wondered if maybe that was why and the Elders were hoping some of that adventurers' spirit would rub off on him. _Because if that would work, then living with a pack of the irredeemable meddlers should have done the trick by the time I was forty._

Steering his pack-bird around a time-worn fountain dedicated to the Mana Goddess only shifted his thoughts further along their well-worn track. Rin—Carina, Knight of Ametrine—had been the one to even get him to agree to this, convincing him as only a well-meaning older sibling could. She had come to him after his initial fury _(how DARE they pick his future FOR him?)_ had subsided and his normally-neat bedroom was a whirlwind mess, gripping his shoulders and tilting her head until he'd looked at her. _"Look, Van, I know. You're content here. Your whole life has been spent here in the desert and behind this city's walls and you've never seemed to want anything more. It worries us. It worries _me_. It's always seemed like you're the Siren in Rei's book of people, satisfied to be in a cage because it lets you avoid everyone. I don't want your wings to wither just because you never bothered to learn to sing._

_ "At the very least, go _look _at the Cottage. Who knows? Even if you never do like traveling, maybe a house on a hill will be the home you thought you already had. And maybe you can find a Knight that suits you like no one inside these walls does."_

Van sighed again, stopping on the grassy bank of a stream not far from the Goddess fountain to let his thirsty chocobo claim the drink she very much wanted. He had caved. Utterly and completely for the sake of a pair of honestly concerned soft violet eyes. Which currently left him tired, filthy and incredibly footsore.

"To the Underworld with it all," he grumbled to Tuft, pulling off his shoes and plunking himself down to chill his blisters in the stream. "As soon as I can stand the thought of walking again, we'll go find the inn. Can't be to hard to miss, right?"

His chocobo lifted her beak from the water and huffed at him for interrupting her communion with it.

"Right."

And for several long minutes there were no other sounds but the water, a few splashes, and the almost subliminal noise of the town center just a little farther up the road. Van found himself relaxing the more he listened, abruptly realizing how tense he'd kept himself for the last few days of this trip. He'd certainly gotten the most out of it; he'd planned his route carefully to incorporate the pilgrimage every member of his family took sometime in their life with the intent of getting it out of the way _now_. That way, no matter if he chose to stay at the Cottage or go back to Etansel, no one would be able to use it as another excuse to pry him out of his comfortable hermitage.

Well, as close to a hermitage as he could get in a city of a few thousand people if he chose Etansel, anyway.

He had met the Dragons of Knowledge, Akravator, Jajara and Vadise, and suspected that in a pinch the Bone Dragon might agree to hide him for a few years if Van promised to put back to rights the Fortress Library that one of his cousins had left in utter disarray. (He might go back anyway, the thought of that many books left in no particular order made the lore-keeper in him twitch in a rather violent fashion.)

He had seen the fading ruins of the Tower of Leires, last and least mourned of the Mage Towers that had inflamed wars between men and Fairies. The spell of perpetual twilight still held the land fast—there was not enough knowledge remaining or recently discovered on how to undo it or the spell that had changed the plants to thrive there, and no one reckless enough to try for worry of bringing famine to the area. In the half-light, the crumbling pile of stones that was all that was left of the Tower had loomed...somewhat less than threateningly.

The Mindas Ruins had fared better, perhaps because his ancestress had seen no need to lay her hands upon them. Van had wandered the paths for a little while, smacking a few of the more capricious monsters about the head with his staff until they'd gotten the message and left him alone. The Sproutlings of legend weren't there anymore, and according to the stories, hadn't been since they had left to heal the Mana Tree's last wounds.

And oh, the Tree. Most wondrous of all had been the Tree, tall and proud and so _bursting_ with life. He had seen the blossom-crowned Sapling (six feet tall this decade and growing) with the blue-leaved vine that curled about it from root to first branching, and the massive broadsword sunk point-first into the ground before it. Wrapped around the sword and carpeting the ground at the Sapling's base was a hardy little plant with flowers that started white but darkened to a rich, smoky purple at their center, peering out from leaves the size of his thumb.

He had stayed there the longest, barring Mindas, praying for a little while and listening to the Mana songs being sung by the four inanimate companions. The broadsword—family stories claimed it had belonged to Xan, and had appeared the same day their aging patriarch had vanished along with his wife—had been the loudest to senses tuned to things of the earth, but by no means had it been the only 'voice'.

Van hadn't had the courage to ask the Knights—a pair of cousins on rotation from Etansel—if the four always sang lullabies.

Sounds of laughter brought him out of his musings in time to watch a foursome of children run into the open space of the square across the stream; two of them had the look of the Venstry with green eyes and golden hair, the girl with white flowers woven above her ears. All four of them were Jumi like him, making him wonder if they weren't some of his youngest cousins from one of the caravans.

But who was the idiot that was letting them run around without supervision? Domina was a peaceful town, yeah, but that didn't mean some unscrupulous character hadn't come for a visit with an eye towards kidnapping. Jumi were still Jumi and their cores were still desirable to mages—admittedly, not as much as before, but—!

The four youngsters—the two blonds, a light brunette, and the younger of the two boys an odd blue-green—seemed ignorant of any danger and went about setting up a game of skip-rope, the boys on the ends and the brunette girl in the middle. The chant they called out was older than Van's grandmother, one that he'd learned at her knee. _"Who are the Wisdoms, what are their names? Toté the Tortoise, the gentle sage..."_

Halfway through it the Venstry girl turned from where she waited, spotted him, and padded on bare feet to the edge of the stream's farther bank. She tilted her head as she considered him, and then piped up, "You look tired."

He blinked. Somehow he didn't think she meant physical exhaustion.

She grinned. "Nope. But, you know...you can rest here. No one rushes here, not even the merchants. No one really expects things of you."

Van quirked an eyebrow. She obviously hadn't met his side of the family. They were always expecting things of him. He'd never been adventurous enough, reckless enough, anything enough to really make them happy with him.

Tucking her hands behind her, the girl rocked back onto her heels. "Well, you're not there anymore, are you?"

_"Seven moons in Heaven, seven Wisdoms wise. The Faeries tore down Towers, the mage Anise lost her Eyes..."_

"Who _are _you?"

Another impish smile. "You know, you should really wake up, mister. Mister?"

"Hey, mister!" Van shot upright from his sprawl across the grass, nearly cracking heads with a pink-haired child leaning over him. The other four children were gone with no sign that they'd ever been there, not even the rope they'd been playing with. Tuft was just rousing nearby, lifting her beak from dusty feathers to _wark_ at the teenaged boy that had interrupted her nap. "Whoa!"

"That should be _my_ line," grumbled Van, rubbing at his eyes to rid them of sun-dazzle. "Did I fall asleep?"

"Guess so," chirped the stranger, scampering back a few steps. "Were pretty dead to the world when I came over. Wanted to let ya know this bank gets really chilly at night; you'd be better off sleeping at the...hey, you're not Evan Venstry, are ya?"

"And if I answer 'yes'...?" Van answered cautiously, blinking. The sun was only a few inches from the horizon, maybe a foot. Too late to make it to the Cottage even if he'd wanted to keep walking, but when had he fallen asleep? Had the Venstry girl and her friends been a dream?

The pink-haired boy beamed. "Then you're kin, and it's our job to take care of you. I'm Piperi, Granny Lisa's youngest great-grandkid. C'mon, I'll take you to the house. You c'n get washed up, we'll feed you, and then you c'n sleep in a real bed for a change." He whistled when Van pulled his now very-wrinkly and quite numb feet from the water. "And we c'n doctor those blisters, wow. Whoever sold you your shoes needs to be smacked with a burdock."

"No kidding," grumbled Van as he gingerly patted his feet dry and pulled on his shoes. "I ran out of healing ointment days ago and haven't found a good cobbler to replace it or them."

"Well, we c'n fix those right up for you," Piperi told him while he collected Tuft's reins. "Not a family of healers and herbalists for nothing, you know."

—

Granny Lisa rocked in her chair on the porch, soaking up the last of the day's summer sunshine. It had been a good day, not too hot and not too cold, and she'd been able to spend almost the whole of it here in her chair reminiscing about the old days. Oh, she'd never be the one to say she missed all of the fights one could get into on the road, but she _did_ long for the days when her bones hadn't been so creaky that a trip _had_ to be made by teleportation or she'd have no trip at all.

Voices caught her ear—ancient or no, there was still nothing wrong with her hearing, thank you—and she watched the youngest of her family round the bend with someone and their chocobo in tow.

For a few heart-stopping moments she thought the dusty young fellow was _Xan_, home again like he hadn't been gone for a couple hundred years with more stories to waiting for him tell them around the dinner table. The boy was the spitting image of him at this distance, half-curls and all. All the picture was missing was that silly hat of his and a broadsword on his back.

"Granny, granny!" Piperi waved to her and pointed at the stranger. "Look, I found a cousin Van! C'n we keep him?"

Lisa smiled at the way her grand-nephew flushed red. "Oi! I am not a pet!"

"No, but you are family, child," she told him when the two had gotten close enough for her worn voice to reach. "Come in, come in. We've been expecting you. Supper should be on the table any moment, so don't forget to wash up. Pips knows the way better than most, don't you, Pips?"

"Aw, Granny!"

"Um, right, thank you, ma'am," Van replied belatedly, then twitched, looking over his shoulder as if someone had whispered in his ear.

"Pips, help Van take his bird to the stable out back and then show him where the washroom is," Lisa told them with a smile quirking at her lips. "And don't forget the Allheal. I know blisters when I see someone limping on them."

The youngster saluted and dragged his cousin off to a stream of chatter. _Boy should have been named after a squirrel instead of mint, the way he goes on_, mused Lisa indulgently. She waited until the voices had faded before she slanted her eyes sideways towards the porch steps. "You're going to give that poor boy a heart-attack before he's been here a week, Rei."

Chuckling, a shadow resolved into the child-like form of the newest Goddess, grinning at her from around the banister. "He'll get used to it," came the unrepentant answer. "He's a Venstry, weirdness is in the job description. Besides, someone needed to remind him of his manners."

"Just don't scare him out of a year's growth." Lisa shook a finger at her teacher and mother before creaking out of her rocking chair to see about getting to her seat at the table. A small hand brushed against her shoulder where no child's hand could reach, sending warmth to curl into her bones. The elderly woman just smiled and went inside before the spell's effects wore off.

—

Van let out a sigh of relief, looking around his new living room. The cousin that had been taking care of the place had finally gone after showing him around a bit outside and mentioning that his bed had been given a new mattress and the linens were fresh this morning. His pantry, he'd been told, was stocked as well and the ancient, smiling Trent in the garden outside had been given a batch of seeds already.

He'd checked out the barn and gotten Tuft settled, seen the workshops currently sitting idle and waiting; taken a moment to silently rejoice over the numerous tomes sitting in his study, and now, finally, was getting a chance to see what his new bedroom even looked like.

The Jumi youth slowly padded up the stairs, trailing a hand along the rail and feeling how the wood had worn smooth and warm from past generations doing the same. The Cottage murmured to him in a way his suite in Etansel never had, told of settling beams and soft breezes coming through the open windows.

Sunshine, golden and thick, poured across the upstairs floorboards in welcome to the newest life in Haven Tree Cottage. Potted plants sat underneath the main upstairs window while wood laid ready in an unlit hearth.

And in the corner by the dresser, well out of the way of any nippy breezes, a small, round-faced cactus raised a bloom-crowned head to smile at him. "Welcome home!"

Van felt something click in his soul and he let his saddlebags thump to the floor as he smiled back. "Hi, Lil' Cactus. I'm home."

The End

The Wisdoms' chant:

Who are the Wisdoms? What are their names?

Toté the Tortoise, the gentle sage

Rosiotti the Beast, lord of Jungles Green,

The only female Wisdom, Matilda the Serene!

Selva of the Four Winds, currents all awhirl,

Gaeus of Earth, the wise living hill.

Pokiehl the Bard, the truth is what he sings,

Olbohn the Warrior, Underworld's King!

One, three, five, six, two, four, seven!

One for every moon that hangs in Heaven!

Unnamed chant:

Seven moons in Heaven, seven Wisdoms wise,

The Faeries tore down Towers, the mage Anise lost her Eyes.

Irzoile lost his empire, Drakonis finally fell,

And if the Seventh Moon exists Goddess alone can tell.

The Jumi faced extinction, were saved by one heart's pain,

And thus the terror ended of Sandra, Jumi's Bane.

The Mana Sword was found again, the mighty Tree did call,

Sing the praise of Mana, the Goddess loves us all.

PS: I know that in canon there are only six moons in the sky. I added an extra because I could and 'six' just didn't fit in the rhymes. Thank you again, everyone!


End file.
